Experimental and Numerical Study of the Effect of Cloud Cover on the Electrical Performance of Photovoltaic Plants

Abstract

<p>The production of electricity from the sun mainly consists of transforming the light emitted by the sun into electrical energy through photovoltaic cells. This production varies proportionally with the light that illuminates the solar photovoltaic module. According to the literature, we noted that during the period of cloudy passage, the production of the solar modules could see a fall going from 5 to 60% according to the size of the photovoltaic fields. The present work consisted of studying the impact of cloudy passages on the electrical production of PV fields at four sites (Loumbila, Sandogo, Ouaga 2000 and IRSAT). To achieve this, a theoretical and experimental study was conducted. The simulation results were compared to the experimental results of two daily sunshine profiles (sunny and cloudy). The results show significant differences between the experimental and simulated data for the two sunshine profiles considered. The losses of electrical production generated by these cloudy passages vary from 27 to 32% and from 35 to 52%, respectively, for the simulated and experimental results. These differences were explained by the probabilistic character of the cloudy passages and by the fact that other major parameters (aerosols, dust deposits and ageing of the solar modules) were not considered. As perspectives, we recommend a continuation of the work by studying, in addition to the cloudy passages, the influence of aerosols and dust deposits on the PV fields realized by us.</p>