Data-analysis and modelling of the effect of inter-row shading on the power production of photovoltaic plants

The aim of this work is to propose a fast and easily implementable model allowing the consideration of inter-row shading in the simulation of the power production of PV plants. Our objective is to find the simplest model with the least number of input parameters. A formulation of the shaded fraction of the module area dependent on the PV configuration and the sun position is first proposed. An analysis of the measurements of two plants is then carried out to understand the effect of inter-row shading for a complete PV array. Based on this analysis, a model is proposed and validated. It is shown that the consideration of inter-row shading with the proposed model allows a relative improvement of the simulation accuracy (RMSE) ranging between 18 and 32% for time steps affected by inter-row shading and between 7 and 12% for a complete year.