PV system performance evaluation

PV system performance evaluation

An accurate evaluation of photo-voltaic (PV) system performance is important for the development of PV industry. The performance evaluation helps the component manufacturers to ensure the quality of their products and to identify future industry needs. There is a need for standard parameters on the basis of which the performance of a PV system can be evaluated. Thus, in order to evaluate the performance of a PV system, the International Electro-technical commission (IEC) has developed standard performance parameters for photo-voltaic system. These performance parameters are developed on the basis of following considerations: As the output of PV systems differ due to size, geographic location, season, design and technology so, it is difficult to compare various PV systems as such, the developed performance parameters should be able to provide a single base for comparing such PV systems.

The parameters should be capable of detecting the operational problems and various losses in the PV system. The parameters should be able to validate models developed for system performance estimation during the design phase.

Reference module at 20 degree tilt and AZ 14 degree has been obtained with PVsyst As input, The data of the global (G0) and the diffuse (Gd) irradiance on the horizontal plane and the ambient temperature, recorded each minute from 5 am to 22 pm in fact during this period the temperatures on the back of all the modules. From the results obtained with PVsyst we calculated the total optical losses, expressed as the ratio between the total incident irradiation. The final yield is the ratio between the energy production of the array/module and its nominal power referring to the energy production from the ac side of the array/module referring to the energy production from the dc side of the array/module.