A novel array configuration technique for improving the power output of the partial shaded photovoltaic system

Power conversion efficiency is the most important factor to be considered in PV systems because it is affected by various environmental conditions. The effect of partial shading is the most influenced factor in the reduction of power output. Various research schemes like Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT), array configuration scheme, reconfiguration, etc., work on the PV system to reduce the impact of partial shading. This paper presents a new kind of array configuration scheme that forms the PV array based on the moves of the Knight coin in the chess game. This arrangement creates the squared PV array of rows with distinct PV modules which is capable of evenly dispersing the shading in the partially shaded PV array. Also, this scheme is applicable for the non-squared PV arrays to create PV rows with the PV modules from a distinct location or from the same row with optimized distance to disperse the maximum level of shading. The proposed method has been discussed with the proper mathematical formulation with all necessary constraints and also it been validated with the hardware arrangements and MATLAB/Simulink® model.