Outdoor characterization and comparison of string and MLPE under clear and partially shaded conditions

Building integrated and building attached photovoltaic (BIPV, BAPV) systems may suffer from lower performance than predicted as a result of unwanted partial shading. New system architectures have been proposed to optimize performance. The common approach of these new architectures is to track the maximum power point of every solar module individually. This paper demonstrates the effect of shading on energy yield by evaluating power level management on the module level compared to string level. Three independent PV systems were installed and extensively monitored in Eindhoven, a reference string inverter system, a power optimizer system and a micro inverter system. The DC and AC performance ratio (PR) of the systems have been analyzed for different weather types based on the clearness index. A pole shading covering 1–2% of the total system surface has been used to evaluate system performance under a specific type of partial shading. Module Level Power Electronics (MLPE) is capable of increasing the PR up to 35% under certain partial shading conditions. However, the string inverter system outperformed MLPE under unshaded operation conditions.