Investigation of the Performances of Different PV Array Configurations in the Presence of Protection Diodes

The aim of this work is to study the output responses of eight different configurations of PV array in the presence of protection diodes. The PV array considered for the analysis has been assumed to be of proportion (6 (rows) x 4 (columns)) and made of four non-identical PV modules, namely, 1STH-220-P, A10J-S72-175, ATI-M660-240, and ZXM6-72-330-M. The presence of four non-identical PV modules in the considered array makes the situation perfect for analyzing the presence of protection diodes under mismatch condition. The investigation has been accomplished by comparing the P-V characteristics and the values of corresponding fundamental parameters of the cited configurations of PV array in partially shaded state, with and without protection diodes obtained on the MATLAB platform. The significance of protection diodes has been emphasized.