Optimal Topology-Aware PV Panel Floorplanning with Hybrid Orientation

Despite of being one of the most widespread green energy sources, the efficiency of PV rooftop installations is still repressed by shading and by the absence of a rigorous irradiance-aware placement approach. In fact, residential installations simply rely on rule-of-thumb criteria and on estimates of shading patterns, based on observation, while more advanced approaches focus solely on the identification of suitable surfaces (e.g., roofs) in a larger area, like a city or a district. This work aims at identifying an optimal placement of PV modules on a roof (with respect to the optimal energy production). The novelty of the proposed solution is that of allowing an irregular placement of PV modules, by considering two degrees of freedom: orientation of each PV module and topology. The goal is to maximize the irradiance exploited by each PV module, and to avoid that the presence of a ‘‘weak’’ module in a series string might have a bottleneck effect on the overall energy production. Experimental results will prove the effectiveness of the proposed solution onto two real world case studies, and that the generated placements allow to increase power production by up to 40% with respect to traditional solutions.