Near-Static Shading Exploration for Smart Photovoltaic Module Topologies Based on Snake-like Configurations

Variable shading due to clouds and nearby objects has a severe impact on the energy yield of photovoltaic installations. Due to the industry's standard of permanently series-connected cells in a photovoltaic (PV) module, partial shading creates mismatches between the Current-Voltage (I-V) characteristics of cells. This article proposes an alternative configurable intramodule cell interconnection topology whereby cell connections can be adapted during operation to allow an optimized power production. The proposed configurable topology outperforms significantly a conventional 10 × 6 module under heavy shade. Moreover, this is achieved in a quite flexible way and with negligible overhead under uniform irradiation conditions.