Dear SAM team and forum members,
I am trying to simulate a very small PV system with 4 modules (~400 Wp, 2 south, 2 west) and 1 microinverter (800 W) with 2 MPPTs.
To tackle the complex partial shading situation, each MPPT shall be connected to 1 south-side module and 1 west-side module in parallel arrangement.
After reading the manual and several forum threads, I understand that it is usually recommended to simulate a microinverter by specifying one inverter per module. But somehow, I have difficulties to apply this recommendation to my use case.
Am I supposed to define 4 subarrays and set the number of inverters to 4? If so, wouldn't I have to adapt the technical specifications of the inverter, because using 4x800W inverter would not reflect the real setup at all. However, reducing the inverter power limit to 400 W or 200 W seems wrong, too.
Wouldn't it be better to simulate the system by specifying only one 800W Inverter with 4 MPPTs? In that case, I would simply approximate the parallel connection of modules with a pair of separate MPPTs.