A Novel Magic Square View Topology of a PV System under Partial Shading Condition

Abstract The photovoltaic (PV) systems produced a power that is influenced by shading pattern, the physical position of the module and array configuration. Therefore, a PV system presents multiple peaks in the electrical characteristics and does not always track the maximum power point (MPP). In this paper, a new topology namely Magic Square View (MSV) is proposed in order to configure the modules in the array to enhance the produced power from the array under partial shading conditions. In this approach, the physical location of the PV modules in a Total Cross Tied (TCT) connected PV array are readjusted based on the Magic square view pattern to spread the shading effect over the entire array. Further, all strings contribute to total power generation; the global peak (GP) becomes closer to the nominal operating point. The investigations of power performance are carried out for different shading scenarios with the TCT configuration, Sudoku (SDK) configurations, and the proposed configuration. It is seen that positioning the modules of the PV array according to the proposed configuration pattern yields improved the performance of power under partially shaded conditions.