Review Of PV Array Interconnection Schemes For Maximum Power Operation

Published results on the performance of photovoltaic arrays under partial shading conditions are thoroughly reviewed, for a variety of conventional array interconnections. New results are presented for a wide variety of realistic shading patterns, and for several new hybrid methods of interconnection. The fully cross-tied array is found to give the best performance, and the simple series – parallel array the worst. In the more favourable shading cases, much of the excess loss in available power due to the shading can be recovered by adding the interconnections. An important result is that most of the power recovery can usually be achieved using a hybrid array with fewer interconnections, and hence lower cabling costs, than the fully cross-tied form.