Control of Photovoltaic Arrays: Dynamical Reconfiguration for Fighting Mismatched Conditions and Meeting Load Requests

In the last five years, the desire to improve the control of photovoltaic (PV) arrays working in mismatched conditions has stimulated substantial research and development. Recent research has revived the previously discounted idea of changing the electrical connection between the PV modules according to their operating conditions and load requests. The switching matrix is reliable and allows the additional cost of module-level switching converters to be avoided and also maintains high efficiency under infrequent mismatched conditions. The PV array electrical reconfiguration also enables the best load matching between the PV source and its varying load. Such issues are discussed in this article with an overview of the main aspects introduced in the technical literature.