The Effect of Shading with Different PV Array Configurations on the Grid-Connected PV System

The main purpose of this paper is to model, study and analyze the effect of shading with different Photovoltaic (PV) array configurations on a three-phase two-stage grid connected PV system. The first stage is a boost converter, which serves the purpose of MPPT (maximum power point tracking) and feeding the extracted solar energy, whereas the second stage is a two-level VSC (voltage source converter) serving as PV inverter which feeds power from a boost converter into the grid. The Incremental Conductance technique was used to track the Maximum Power Point (MPP). The two PV configurations used through this paper are Series-Parallel (SP) and Total Cross Tied (TCT) configurations, which showed best performance among other configurations (Series, Parallel, Bridge-linked and Honey-Comb configurations) [1]. The results showed that TCT configuration PV array Grid connected PV system has better efficiency under partial shading effect than SP, and that validated by simulation in the Matlab-Simulink environment.