Fibonacci reconfiguration strategy to manoeuvre partially shaded photovoltaic arrays: an experimental prototype

Abstract The shading of panels in an array has a considerable impact on solar array power production. Partial shading occurs when a portion of a solar array is shaded, resulting in uneven irradiance distribution throughout the array’s panels. This causes the shaded PV panels to become reverse biased and operate as a load, resulting in the Hot Spot phenomenon. To prevent this, bypass diodes linked in shunt to the PV panels provide an alternate channel for the flow of current under shade situations. Although damage to shaded photovoltaic modules is avoided, a mismatch between row currents is still caused, leading to many peaks in the power-voltage and current-voltage characteristic curves caused by bypass diodes. To address this issue, this study proposes a novel reconfiguration approach called the Fibonacci Number Generator, which reshuffles the panels in an array to spread the shadow better. This newly proposed technique is compared to a standard TCT interconnection and other reconfigurations like Skyscraper, Ken-Ken, and Chaotic Baker map to test its efficacy based on Global Maximum Power Point and Mismatch Loss on both software and hardware platforms.