Study of Power Optimizers for grid-connected photovoltaic systems

The use of Photovoltaic (PV) energy is increasing and the high penetration of PV in the power grid creates several challenges. The main challenge consists in reducing power losses in conversion. The main losses are those caused by total and partial shading, mismatch losses, ohmic loss, and temperature. In this occasion, Power Optimizer for Photovoltaic Systems (POPS) have recently appeared, which aim at increasing the energy conversion of the PV system. Thus, this work presents the POPS and performs simulations with PV*SOL software verifying the gain provided under different conditions. As a result, in the best case, Optimization Performance (Op) reached 10.84% (SolarEdge) in Sete Lagoas-MG and 7.17% (Tigo) in Curitiba-PR. Therefore, POPS may be a solution for improving energy conversion of the PV system, mainly due to the ongoing reduction in the cost of power electronics.