Work

Quantum-enhanced digital twin framework for real-time reconfiguration of photovoltaic arrays under dynamic partial shading conditions

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: ABSTRACT Photovoltaic (PV) arrays operating under dynamic partial shading conditions experience severe power degradation that conventional static topologies cannot effectively mitigate. Existing reconfiguration techniques remain largely offline and insufficiently adaptive to rapidly evolving shading dynamics. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a Quantum-Enhanced Digital Twin (QEDT) framework that enables millisecond-scale PV array reconfiguration through continuous state mirroring and quantum-accelerated optimization. The framework couples a high-fidelity digital twin modeling per-module irradiance and temperature dynamics with a Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) to determine optimal switching configurations under time-varying shading conditions. Validated on a 9 × 9 PV array under dynamic cloud-movement shading sequences, the QEDT framework achieves a global maximum power gain of up to 23.4% over TCT across four dynamic shading scenarios, outperforming SuDoKu, Cuckoo Search (CS), Harris Hawks Optimization (HHO), Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO), Dragonfly Algorithm, and Gurobi MILP across all evaluated metrics. Comparative evaluation across fill factor, mismatch loss, and annual energy yield confirms the consistent superiority of the proposed framework, establishing QEDT as a significant advancement toward adaptive, quantum-accelerated PV array management. In the reconfiguration latency benchmark, QEDT achieves 56 ms average latency, substantially outperforming GWO (3100 ms), Dragonfly Algorithm (3800 ms), HHO (2400 ms), PSO (4200 ms), and Gurobi-based MILP (250 ms), demonstrating real-time responsiveness unmatched by both classical metaheuristic and deterministic optimization approaches.

Source: Energy Nexus

DOI: 10.1016/j.nexus.2026.100763

Authors: Ramji Tiwari, S. Saravanan, T. Yuvaraj, Mohit Bajaj, Vojtech Blazek, Lukas Prokop