| Summary: | Photovoltaic (PV) systems are usually developed by configuring the PV arrays with regular connection schemes, such as series-parallel, total cross-tied, bridge-linked, among others. Such a strategy is aimed at increasing the power that is generated by the PV system under partial shading conditions, since the power production changes depending on the connection scheme. Moreover, irregular and non-common connection schemes could provide higher power production for irregular (but realistic) shading conditions that aere caused by threes or other objects. However, there are few mathematical models that are able to predict the power production of different configurations and reproduce the behavior of both regular and irregular PV arrays. Those general array models are slow due to the large amount of computations that are needed to find the PV current for a given PV voltage. Therefore, this paper proposes a general mathematical model to predict the power production of regular and irregular PV arrays, which provides a faster calculation in comparison with the general models that were reported in the literature, but without reducing the prediction accuracy. The proposed modeling approach is based on detecting the inflection points that are caused by the bypass diodes activation, which enables to narrow the range in which the modules voltages are searched, thus reducing the calculation time. Therefore, this fast model is useful in designing the fixed connections of PV arrays that are subjected to shading conditions, in order to reconfigure the PV array in real-time, depending on the shading pattern, among other applications. The proposed solution is validated by comparing the results with another general model and with a circuital implementation of the PV system.
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