• Journal of Power Electronics
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.1489-1500
• /
• 2018

Partial shading analysis of large-scale photovoltaic (PV) arrays has recently become a theoretically and numerically challenging issue, and it is necessary for PV system designers. The main contributions of this study are the following: 1) A PSIM-based macro-model was employed because it is remarkably fast, has high precision, and has no convergence issues. 2) Three types of equivalent macro-models were developed for the transformation of a small PV sub-array with uniform irradiance to a new macro-model. 3) On the basis of the proposed new macro-model, a tearing method was established, which can divide a large-scale PV array into several small sub-arrays to significantly improve the efficiency improvement of a simulation. 4) Three platforms, namely, PSIM, PSpice, and MATLAB, were applied to evaluate the proposed tearing method. The proposed models and methods were validated, and the value of this research was highlighted using an actual large-scale PV array with 2420 PV modules. Numerical simulation demonstrated that the tearing method can remarkably improve the simulation efficiency by approximately thousands of times, and the method obtained a precision of nearly 6.5%. It can provide a useful tool to design the optimal configuration of a PV array with a given shading pattern as much as possible.

• Journal of Power Electronics
• /
• v.19 no.5
• /
• pp.1259-1269
• /
• 2019

PV system performance is dependent on different irradiations and temperature values in addition to the capability of the employed PV inverter / maximum power point tracker (MPPT) circuit or algorithm. Therefore, it would be appropriate to use a PV simulator capable of producing identical repeatable conditions regardless of the weather to evaluate the performance of inverter / MPPT circuits and algorithms. In accordance with this purpose, a photovoltaic (PV) array simulator is presented in this paper. The simulator is designed to generate current-voltage (I-V) and power-voltage (P-V) curves of a PV panel. Series connected cascaded modules constitute the basic part of the simulator. This feature also allows for the modeling of PV arrays since the number of modules can be increased and high voltage values can be reached with the simulator. In addition, the curves obtained at the simulator output become similar to the actual curves of sample PV panels with an increase in the number of modules. In order to show the validity of the proposed simulator, it was simulated for various situations such as panels under full irradiance and partial shading conditions. After completing simulations, experiments were realized to support the simulation study. Both simulation and experimental results show that the proposed simulator will be very useful for researchers to carry out PV studies under laboratory conditions.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
• /
• 2008.10c
• /
• pp.185-187
• /
• 2008

This paper proposed design and development of a photo voltaic (PV) array fed induction motor drive. A drive system using a chopper circuit to track maximum power from the PV for different solar insolation and a current controlled voltage source inverter (CC-VSI) to optimally match the motor to PV characteristics is presented. The model equations governing interaction of torque and flux producing components of motor current with available solar power is developed for the operation of the system at optimum efficiency. Performance of the system is presented for different realistic operating conditions, which demonstrates its special features for applications such as solar water pumping system, solar vehicles and floor mills located in hilly and isolated areas.

• Journal of Power Electronics
• /
• v.19 no.6
• /
• pp.1566-1574
• /
• 2019

Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) under the partial shading condition is a challenging research topic for photovoltaic systems. Shaded photo-voltaic module result in complex peak patterns on the power versus voltage curve which can misguide classical MPPT algorithms. Thus, various kinds of global MPPT algorithms have been studied. These have typically consisted of partial shading detection, global peak search and MPPT. The conventional partial shading detection algorithm aims to detect all of the occurrences of partial shading. This results in excessive execution of global peak searches and discontinuous operation of the MPPT. This in turn, reduces the achievable power for the PV module. Based on a theoretical investigation of power verse voltage curve patterns under various partial shading conditions, it is realized that not all the occurrences of partial shadings require a global peak search. Thus, an intelligent partial shading detection algorithm that provides exact identification of global peak search necessity is essential for the efficient utilization of solar energy resources. This paper presents a new partial shading determinant algorithm utilizing adaptive threshold levels. Conventional methods tend to be too sensitive to sharp shading patterns but insensitive to smooth patterns. However, the proposed algorithm always shows superb performance, regardless of the partial shading patterns.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.171-177
• /
• 2002

The Photovoltaic systems with solar cell way Provide electrical energy to the utility/consumers, which are becoming one of the promising energy substitutes. The photovoltaic system can be classified into two types : One is the stand-alone type, and the other utility interactive one. The latter can return the generated power to the utility, but the former can't. The utility interactive systems are so valuable for peak power cut in summer season. In the photovoltaic systems the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) has been studied for the increase of the generating energy of the photovoltaic system. There are many control methods of MPPT, but a new MPPT algorithm is proposed to overcome the disadvantages of the conventional ones, and as a result the proposed method enables to improve both tracking ability and generating efficiency of photo voltaic system without DC chopper.