Simulation of partial shading on solar photovoltaic modules with experimental verification

With rapidly growing energy demands and increased consciousness about the environment, PV installations are being increasingly used in various applications such as communications and lighting. However, one of the major challenges in using a PV source is that they are often subjected to partial shading and rapid fluctuations of shading. In many cases, the PV arrays get partially shaded due to various reasons, resulting in lower energy production yields. This further leads to nonlinearities in characteristics, causing it to get more complicated if the entire array does not receive uniform insolation. In this study, a Simulink-based mathematical model of a PV system has been developed to simulate the performance of a PV system for the various conditions of partial shading. The simulated results have been compared with experimentally obtained results of the various configurations of shading that were used for the partial shading conditions on a commercially available PV module. © 2015 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.