PSO-Driven Scalable Dual-Adaptive PV Array Reconfiguration Under Partial Shading

Abstract

Partial shading conditions cause current mismatches between series-connected panels in photovoltaic (PV) arrays, significantly reducing power efficiency. To mitigate this limitation, reconfiguration methods based on dynamically changing the electrical connections within the PV array have been proposed. In recent years, adaptive and dual-adaptive PV connection structures, which particularly balance the line currents and aim to restore current symmetry under irregular shading conditions, have gained prominence due to their notable efficiency improvements. The dual nature of these structures inherently supports this symmetry by enabling balanced reconfigurations on both sides of the array. However, the dual-adaptive structure expands the solution space due to the exponential growth of the connection combinations with the increasing number of lines, and this makes real-time optimization difficult. In fact, this structure has been optimized with genetic algorithm (GA) before; however, the convergence time of GA exceeds acceptable limits in large arrays. In this study, a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is applied to solve the dual-adaptive PV array reconfiguration problem. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is a metaheuristic algorithm that utilizes swarm intelligence to efficiently explore large solution spaces. PSO's fast convergence capability and low computational cost enable real-time applications by enabling optimization in acceptable times even for larger PV arrays. Simulation results reveal that PSO successfully manages the exponential growth in the solution space and significantly increases the real-time applicability of the reconfiguration process by effectively increasing the efficiency. In this respect, PSO is considered a powerful and practical solution for reconfiguration problems in large-scale PV arrays.