Static reconfiguration method of photovoltaic array based on improved competence square

Abstract Partial shading can reduce the power output of a photovoltaic (PV) array due to mismatch losses. Therefore, various static and dynamic reconfiguration techniques have been proposed to address this problem. Although dynamic reconfiguration methods are fast and flexible, they face challenges such as complex hardware circuits and high costs. In contrast, static reconfiguration methods simplify control complexity, improve system stability, and significantly reduce costs. Among the existing static reconfiguration techniques, the competence square (CS) method, which changes the physical positions of PV panels without modifying the total cross tied (TCT) based electrical connections, has been introduced to enhance power generation. However, this arrangement faces drawbacks due to the lack of effective chromatic dispersion and insufficient power enhancement under shading conditions. This paper proposes an improved competence square (ICS) reconfiguration method to further improve the power output. The ICS method first reconfigures the PV array using the CS method, then applies the lo shu (LS) method for secondary reconfiguration to determine the optimal connections. This method is compared with TCT, CS and improved northern goshawk optimization (INGO) methods. Additionally, the performance of the proposed method is evaluated against various existing photovoltaic array configurations by comparing the global maximum power point (GMPP), fill factor (FF), mismatch loss (ML), and power enhancement (PE). The experiment shows that under shading conditions of square shading, rectangle shading, trapezoid shading, triangle shading, L-shaped shading, cross shading, discontinuous shading, and irregular shading, reconfiguring PV arrays using ICS consistently achieves the highest power improvement. Compared to TCT, the power output increases significantly by 16.6%, 2.1%, 18.0%, 16.0%, 19.1%, 5.0%, 4.0%, and 3.0%, respectively. Comparison results validate the proposed ICS method in enhancing the global maximum power under shaded conditions.