Efficient Output Power Enhancement and Protection Technique for Hot Spotted Solar Photovoltaic Modules

One of the major issues faced by solar PV module is the occurrence of hotspots. Disproportionate current production of the solar cells is the basic reason for the creation of hot spots. This intense event deteriorates the cell and its protecting shield, resulting in permanent damage to cells. To overcome this issue, some techniques are developed by the researchers to boost power production and to suppress the hot spots. In this paper, a sustainable technique is proposed to improve the performance of hot spotted solar PV system. During hot spot conditions, the proposed technique reduces hot spots and also generates more power compared to the conventional techniques. In the conventional techniques, the relays/switches are connected in the strings of the PV module, whereas in the proposed technique, the relays are connected in the appropriate places of the substrings of the module. In the proposed technique, the relays are operated by disconnecting the affected sub string and the generated power is also fetched in an efficient manner. The proposed method is tested in a scaled down 80 W module. In order to locate the hot spots, the solar photovoltaic cells are inspected using thermal images obtained from thermal cameras. The analysis is preceded by deriving the P-V curve under various hot spot conditions. The proposed technique effectively reduces the temperature by 12 degree Celsius and enhances the output power by 28.9W. The obtained results suggest that the proposed technique makes the PV module a sustainable one.