Rule Based Model for Power Peaks of Overlapped PV Arrays

Photovoltaic arrays with overlapped bypass diodes have dissimilar characteristics in comparison to normal-bypass diodes arrays. Investigation of partially shaded PV arrays with overlapped bypass diodes is more intricate because of the presence of shared PV cells linked antiparallel to bypass diodes. Calculating the power-peaks of partially shaded PV arrays is time consuming due to the need for simulating the entire power curve which could take hours as demonstrated in recent studies. While there are deterministic power peaks estimators for PV arrays with normal diodes, there is still no available tool to calculate the power peaks of overlapped PV arrays. In this paper, a deterministic modelling approach for the power peaks of overlapped bypass diodes photovoltaic arrays is developed. By using three developed rules, a set of mathematical equations, based on LAMBERT W function, are derived to estimate the power peaks of overlapped bypass diodes PV arrays. The developed method is fast and capable of locating the power peaks accurately with no need to model the entire Power-Voltage curve. The efficiency of the proposed modeling approach is validated utilizing Simulink and experimentally.