A Strategy to Enhance Generator Efficiency of Sudoku-based PV Arrays Under Partial Shading Conditions

Partial shading conditions (PSCs) is the most common phenomenon among PV arrays, causing significant power losses in PV arrays as well as reducing the lifespan of the photovoltaic (PV) arrays. Such method as Sudoku (SDK)-based reconfiguration can suggest a way to rearrange interconnections of PV modules of the PV array, which mitigates the effects of PSCs on the PV array. However, since this method cannot disperse the partial shading effectively in some cases, it is necessary to improve the SDK-based reconfiguration technique to achieve better output power. This paper proposes a biogeography-based algorithm to connect two adjacent PV arrays altogether to reconFigure the interconnection between PV arrays. The power-voltage (P-V) characteristics of PV arrays are drawn for a group of two PV arrays under random shading conditions. The effectiveness of the rearranging method is verified by an investigation conducted on a single-diode model-based PV model. Since the power loss is minimized 19.3% compared to the one of the conventional configured PV array and 0.3% compared to the power loss of the SDK-based configured PV array, the proposed method could be a promising solution in reducing the effects of PSCs on PV arrays.