Performance of Screw Horizontal and Bridge Linkage Photovoltaic Array Configurations

Abstract

Due to partial shading effects on the productivity of solar panels which in turn negatively impacts the performance characteristics of photovoltaic systems, researchers work on different studies to overcome this phenomenon and improve solar system productivity. Therefore, this study aims to investigate different techniques to enhance the output power, fill factor, and efficiency of the PV system by reducing the number of local maximum power peaks, power losses, and mismatch losses. The configurations include a novel static reconfiguration technique, called a Screw Horizontal photovoltaic array, and a recently developed technique known as a Bridge Linkage array. Both of these are modeled using MATLAB/Simulink software and examined during six shading patterns. The novelty of this study is that we combined the above static reconfiguration technique with another modern technique called blocking and bypass diode technology to prevent the effect of reverse current and hotspot phenomena respectively. According to the results, the Bridge Linkage configuration performs the most efficiently under partial shading conditions compared to the Screw horizontal PV array configuration.