Accuracy of Simscape Solar Cell Block for Modeling a Partially Shaded Photovoltaic Module

Tihomir Betti (), Ante Kristić, Ivan Marasović and Vesna Pekić
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Tihomir Betti: Department of Electronics and Computing, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Split, 21000 Split, Croatia
Ante Kristić: Department of Electronics and Computing, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Split, 21000 Split, Croatia
Ivan Marasović: Department of Electronics and Computing, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Split, 21000 Split, Croatia
Vesna Pekić: Department of Electronics and Computing, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Split, 21000 Split, Croatia

Energies, 2024, vol. 17, issue 10, 1-19

Abstract: With half-cut photovoltaic (PV) modules being the dominant technology on the market, there is an increasing necessity for accurate modeling of this module type. Circuit simulators such as Simulink are widely used to study different topics regarding photovoltaics, often employing a solar cell block available from the Simcape library. The purpose of this work is to validate this model against measurements for a partially shaded half-cut PV module. Diverse shading scenarios are created by varying the number of shaded substrings, the number of shaded solar cells in the substring, and the shading level. For every shading scenario, the PV module’s I-V curve is measured, along with in-plane irradiance, air temperature, and module temperature. A comprehensive evaluation of simulation accuracy is presented. The results confirm a high accuracy of the model with mean nRMSE values of 2.2% for I-V curves and 2.8% when P-V curves are considered. It is found that the simulation errors tend to increase when increasing the number of shaded substrings. At the same time, no obvious dependency of simulation accuracy on the shading level or the number of shaded solar cells in the substring is found.

Keywords: PV modeling; MATLAB Simscape solar cell; model validation; partial shading; half-cut PV module (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: 2024
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