Adaptive Photovoltaic Configurations

Electrical mismatching losses in photovoltaic systems are of great interest to system designers. In this book, an adaptive photovoltaic (PV) system is proposed based on novel flexible switch matrixes that form different possible topologies. This system maximizes the generated power in real-time for utility interactive systems in a modified inverter configuration. The proposed system uses fewer components and achieves maximum efficiency during shading and module mismatches by reconfiguring the PV modules based on real-time solar insolation, current operational conditions, and maximum efficiency criterion. Simulation tools are used to demonstrate that the proposed topologies provide improvement in efficiency over existing traditional PV systems. Furthermore, a prototype has been designed and developed. Experimental results for efficiency comparison between traditional PV system configurations are described in this work. Potential improvement using the proposed adaptive configuration is analyzed. The overall results validate the adaptive system and its benefits for a wide range of applications.