A general modeling method that simulates photovoltaic arrays for environmental and electrical variability

A simulation method for modeling typical photovoltaic (PV) arrays and modules is proposed to find the exact current and voltage relationship of geometrically and electrically conFig.d PV arrays or modules. A damped Newton method is used to solve the system of general nonlinear equations to guarantee the convergence to the solution in an inexpensive way since a constructive programming method is used to represent the PV array or module exactly. The model can deal with the variability of mismatch effects due to disparate cells, modules and strings, different configurations of bypass diodes, and partial shading. Furthermore, geometry coordinates are also included to the numerical model for the first time to represent the physical configuration of a PV array or module. A case study is performed to show the effectiveness of the general method.