Half-Shift mirror reconfiguration technique for enhancing power extraction from solar PV arrays under partial shading

Photovoltaic (PV) arrays under partial shading conditions (PSCs) suffer power degradation due to current mismatch and non-uniform irradiance. This paper proposes a novel Half-Shift Mirror (HSM) reconfiguration method for improving the power extraction from TCT connected PV arrays. The suggested method physically moves PV modules without changing the electrical connections and adopts a half-shift and mirror operations to satisfy row, column, diagonal, anti-diagonal and sub-array uniqueness. The performance of the HSM technique is evaluated using 4 × 4 and 8 × 8 PV arrays under nine shading patterns, while a generalized reconstruction procedure is verified for a 6 × 5 non-square PV array under six shading conditions. For the 8 × 8 array, HSM achieves 10.69 to 20.92 kW GMPP with 0.01–0.43 kW mismatch loss and provides up to 33.38% power enhancement over TCT. The 6 × 5 array achieves 4.61–30.44% power enhancement under the investigated shading conditions. In addition, experimental validation using a 4 × 4, 640 W PV array under outdoor controlled shading conditions demonstrates GMPP enhancements of 1.31–84.73% over TCT. The results demonstrate that HSM provides effective shade dispersion, reduced row-current mismatch, local-peak suppression and improved power extraction while retaining the original TCT connections, confirming the scalability and practical applicability of the proposed HSM technique.