A novel benzene structured array configuration for harnessing maximum power from PV array under partial shading condition with reduced number of cross ties

Partial shading (PS) phenomena significantly degrade the power output from the photovoltaic (PV) array. Due to the PS effect, there is a mismatch in current between the PV modules of a series-connected PV string. As a result, in-shaded module power dissipates, resulting in increased module temperature and the creation of local hotspots. To avoid the hotspot effect, bypass diodes are connected anti-parallel to the PV modules. But the activation of bypass diodes creates multiple peaks in I-V and P-V characteristics. The effect of PS can be reduced by using a suitable array configuration and the performance of the PV array gets improved. Among all the existing PV array configurations, the total cross-tied (TCT) configuration performs better under partial shading conditions (PSCs). But the disadvantage of TCT is that it has an enormous number of tie connections, creating complexity in an array configuration and, therefore, more cable losses. The main objective of this paper is to propose a novel array configuration named benzene (BZ) configuration, which eliminates the demerits of the TCT array configuration. Benzene configuration has improved performance with fewer tie connections compared to conventional tie-connected configurations such as TCT, bridge link (BL), and honeycomb (HC). The performance of the tie-connected array configurations is analyzed under different PSCs by considering the various performance parameters such as global maximum power (GMP), the voltage at maximum power (Vmp), current at maximum power (Imp), mismatch loss (ML), shading loss (SL), fill factor (FF) and performance ratio. It is observed that the proposed benzene array configuration gives better output performance, even having lower mismatch losses with a reduced amount of tie connections. Further, the effect of the bypass diode on a partially shaded PV string is investigated through MATLAB Simulation and experimental analysis.