Analysis on inverter selection for domestic rooftop solar photovoltaic system deployment

Partial shading is a common occurrence in residential and commercial photovoltaic (PV) installations. It causes mismatch losses, particularly in string and central inverter-based systems, leading to output power loss and in turn lower performance ratio under partial shading conditions. The choice of string configuration itself is critical in lowering mismatch losses and the levelized energy cost. While a range of commercial inverters with different string configurations and prices are available, many standard string topologies are not optimum for common settings under various shading scenarios. Therefore, in this article, we evaluate various string configurations attached to state-of-the-art commercial inverters widely used in the industry from both mismatch loss and cost perspective. We quantify the impact of various shading scenarios on multiple inverter configurations to ascertain the relative performance of PV systems under symmetrical shading as well as random shading in field settings. For multiple PV system configurations (on a single rooftop), the mismatch loss varied up to 2.3% and 6% under symmetrical shading and field settings, respectively. The levelized cost of electricity also varies from 0.062$/kWh to 0.041$/kWh and is dependent on the type of inverter and string configurations.