Environmental data set for the design and analysis of the Photovoltaic system in the Jordan Valley

Abstract

Renewable energy penetration in the national electrical grid in Jordan has been rapidly increasing in the last few years, touching nearly 30%. Limited grid capacity has been a driver to slow down large-scale projects and has motivated increased attention towards off-grid photovoltaic (PV) systems. Planning properly-sized on-grid and off-grid systems requires accurate knowledge of the environmental and irradiance conditions at the installation site. As off-grid systems are equally of interest to non-critical types of loads, investments are directed towards agricultural applications like water pumping and desalination. To assess the potential of expanding the renewable energy penetration in agricultural areas in the Jordan valley and surrounding areas, this article presents annually measured environmental data including irradiance, temperature and wind speed, in addition to data related to soling on an existing off-grid PV system installed in the Jordan Valley. These data are used in the research article entitled "Performance Analysis of Off-grid PV systems in the Jordan Valley", Al-Addous et al., 2017, and in the research article entitled "Modelling and Quantifying of Dust Accumulation Impact on PV Module Performance" Al-Addous et al., 2019. Data were collected and gathered using calibrated, high accuracy sensors installed at different parts of the installed plant.