Efficient yet Accurate Models for Photovoltaic Modules with Shading Effects

Mismatches between solar cells, such as shading effects, significantly reduce the output power of a photovoltaic (PV) module. An effective method to maintain power output in the presence of these mismatches is to add bypass diodes. However, existing modeling approaches cannot efficiently model PV modules with bypass diodes in place. Starting with an equivalent circuit model of a PV module, we develop a Colony-Wise model to reduce the model complexity while maintaining the same accuracy compared to the well-accepted Ground Truth model. To further reduce the model complexity, a Two-Colony model with a constant computational complexity is developed. We analyze the accuracy of the Two-Colony model by comparing its Power-Voltage (P-V) curves to the results generated by the Ground Truth model. Experimental results show that the maximum output power values have an average error of 3.4% and average correlation of 0.962 with respect to the Ground Truth model's results