Improving the Efficiency of Partially Shaded Photovoltaic Modules without Bypass Diodes

Photovoltaic (PV) modules comprise bypass diodes to limit hotspot formation. However, they suffer from performance reduction in the presence of partial shading. This paper proposes external circuitry to control the connection type (series/parallel) of the PV cells through a pair of on/off switches resulting in three different operation modes. Mode 1 represents the typical 36 series-connected cells, while mode 2 represents two parallel-connected strings, and mode 3 maximizes the output current where the four strings are connected in parallel. The added values of the approach are that (1) the output current of the PV module can be increased without the need for a buck-boost converter and (2) the partial shading has less impact on the output power than the adoption of bypass diodes. This work shows that simulating three monocrystalline PV modules (120 W, 200 W, and 241 W), consisting of 36, 60, and 72 series-connected cells, lose about 74% when one cell has 80% shading in the absence of bypass diodes. The application of a bypass diode for each pair of strings in the PV module improves this decrease to 61.89%, 40.66%, and 39.47%, respectively. According to our proposed approach, this power loss can be significantly decreased to 19.59%, 50%, and 50.01% for the three PV modules, respectively, representing more than a 42% improvement compared to bypass diodes.