Design- Time Optimization of Reconfigurable PV Architectures for Irregular Surfaces

Compared to flat PV arrays, PV cells on curved surfaces such as vehicles, wearable devices and building rooftops have varying inclination angles and therefore, non-uniform operating conditions. Dynamic reconfiguration techniques used for tackling partial shading effects can also be deployed for non-uniform operating conditions on curved surfaces. However, designing a reconfigurable PV system for irregular surfaces is significantly different because the placement of reconfiguration switches should account for the curvature, not just random partial shading patterns. In this paper, we propose a designtime framework for identifying the optimal placement of reconfiguration switch sets as well as a dynamic reconfiguration algorithm for a PV array on a given irregular surface. Case studies performed for different irregular surfaces show that our proposed technique reduces the number of reconfiguration switches by 83% while still generating 81% power compared to having reconfiguration switches on all PV atomic units. While the cost reduction due to the reduced number of switches is marginal in most applications because the PV panel cost dominates the total cost, the technique helps in significantly reducing the wiring harness required for dynamic reconfiguration switches, which is a burden for manufacturing.