Enhancement of the extracted maximum power of PV array during partial shading

Abstract

In recent days, penetration of Renewable Energy in energy market is significantly increasing. The most popular renewable energy technology implemented is PV solar. This is due to low installation and investment cost, simple scheme connection, incentive given from authority and also technology development. However, PV solar facing an issues of extracting maximum power from solar panel especially during partial shading. It became an important issue in order to maintain the output power from PV that injected to the grid system. Normal connection of PV array is with a dimension of (m x n). During partial shading, this configuration of PV system unable to extract maximum power due to PV characteristic has multiple peak. The PV system algorithm may fail to track the maximum power. Therefore, it is suggested an approach of switched PV. With this approach, the system is reconfigured to form array with dimension of (m/2 x 2n). This approach is expected to improve the extracting maximum power. Besides that, this method is more simple and cost effective. In this project a 4kW on grid PV system is simulated using MATLAB software in order to analysis the impact of partial shading. For this system it have 2 configuration of PV for switching which is 4x4 configuration and 2x8 configuration. This 2 configuration give different output of power for different of percentage of partial shading. Therefore it can be conclude that the switching PV can improve of extracting maximum power from solar panel during partial shading.