Availability factor of a PV power plant: evaluation based on generation and inverter running periods

Abstract

In a solar PV power plant, the plant availability factor is one of the important factors to be evaluated. This depends on the operative functioning of various components and grid regulation. In this paper, a simple method is proposed to evaluate the availability factors of a solar PV plant by considering the real time data of 1 MWp solar power plant that was commissioned in 2011 in south India. Generation start time, end time, and actual running periods of the inverter were selected as prominent data in the study. A consecutive five financial years of data (2011–2012; 2012–2013; 2013–2014; 2014–2015; 2015–2016) was used to observe the variations in availability factors of inverters, as well as the plant availability factors. From the analysis, it is observed that tripping time greatly effects the availability factor of inverter as well as the PV plant. The variation in availability factor over the five consecutive financial years is seen to be within the range of 92.44 % to 95.69 %. This clearly states that, on average 4.31 % to 7.56 %, the installed solar PV power is technically not generated any power. Hence, estimating the availability factor could be very much essential to deal with the performance of the PV systems and possible options of reducing energy losses due to availability factors could be suggested.