Abstract
The power output of solar photovoltaic systems can be affected by environmental factors, such as partial shading. This can lead to a decrease in the power conversion rate of the system. Although existing solutions for this issue are cost-effective and efficient, new solutions could further improve the system's performance by increasing consistency, power generation, and reducing mismatch loss and costs. To address this, a new method for configuring PV arrays was proposed using the calcudoku puzzle pattern. The performance of this new array configuration was evaluated in MATLAB/Simulink® for a 9 × 9 PV array and compared to conventional methods like Series-parallel, Total Cross Tied (TCT), and Sudoku array configurations. The performance was evaluated under eight different shading patterns based on power conversion rate and mismatch losses between the PV rows. The proposed array configuration resulted in 3.9%-13.3% of mismatch losses across the different shading patterns, while other configurations had a minimum of 13.8% to a maximum of 51.9% of mismatch losses. This reduction in mismatch losses directly improved the power conversion rate of the PV array.