Mitigation of Hot-Spots in Photovoltaic Systems Using Distributed Power Electronics

Carlos Olalla, Md. Nazmul Hasan, Chris Deline and Dragan Maksimović
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Carlos Olalla: Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Automatic Control Engineering, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 43007 Tarragona, Spain
Md. Nazmul Hasan: Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Automatic Control Engineering, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 43007 Tarragona, Spain
Chris Deline: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, USA
Dragan Maksimović: Department of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: In the presence of partial shading and other mismatch factors, bypass diodes may not offer complete elimination of excessive power dissipation due to cell reverse biasing, commonly referred to as hot-spotting in photovoltaic (PV) systems. As a result, PV systems may experience higher failure rates and accelerated ageing. In this paper, a cell-level simulation model is used to assess occurrence of hot-spotting events in a representative residential rooftop system scenario featuring a moderate shading environment. The approach is further used to examine how well distributed power electronics converters mitigate the effects of partial shading and other sources of mismatch by preventing activation of bypass diodes and thereby reducing the chances of heavy power dissipation and hot-spotting in mismatched cells. The simulation results confirm that the occurrence of heavy power dissipation is reduced in all distributed power electronics architectures, and that submodule-level converters offer nearly 100% mitigation of hot-spotting. In addition, the paper further elaborates on the possibility of hot-spot-induced permanent damage, predicting a lifetime energy loss above 15%. This energy loss is fully recoverable with submodule-level power converters that mitigate hot-spotting and prevent the damage.

Keywords: photovoltaics; bypass diodes; power electronics; subMICs; partial-shading; hot-spotting; converters; balancing; reliability; accelerated ageing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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