Photovoltaic systems (PVSs) are the cornerstone of various hybrid renewable energy systems (HRESs). Although the mitigation of hotspots is one of the most crucial challenges for HRESs planners and operators, despite some of the current research trying to find solutions to the hotspot problem, researchers manage to lower the hotspot temperature but without considering commercialization scale perspectives due to design complexity and high-cost consequences. To tackle these challenges, a modified eco-technical strategy for mitigating the hotspot of PVSs is developed in this article. The proposed strategy is simple, economical, and reliable. Wherein additional IGBT is connected in series with the shaded cells in addition to the presence of the prevailing bypass diode (BPD) to distribute the shading effect on the shaded cells. The effectiveness of the modified mitigation strategy is validated during various scenarios of partial shading at solar irradiation change. In addition, the proposed simplified strategy is designed, implemented, and executed using MATLAB/SIMULINKTM. In addition, a practical experiment is conducted in different scenarios and compared with the traditional strategy. The results of the simulation and the practical experiment validate the efficiency and ability of the modified strategy to reduce the power dissipation in the shaded cells by reducing the voltage across the reverse-biased solar cell. The average dissipated power of the shaded cells is reduced by about 74% at low irradiance levels.
The thermographic images are produced to validate that the temperature of the shaded cells attached to the proposed simplified strategy under mismatch conditions, has decreased by up to 5 °C compared to the traditional strategy (bypass diode) under the same operational and environmental conditions. The total output power of the modules equipped with the suggested strategy has increased compared to the traditional strategy (BPD) under the same operational and environmental conditions while preserving the reliability of PVSs-based HRESs. |
