Abstract
The paper presents the method for calculating the capacity of an autonomous solar power plant and its components. This method allows considering a load variation during the day as well as specifying the required capacity of the battery and excluding an unjustified overestimation of the power plant component capacities along with the increase in efficiency of the autonomous solar power plant. Formula for determining the required battery capacity of an autonomous solar power plant could be easily generalized for any number of changes in the load schedule steps. Virtual instruments (calculators) for calculating the capacity of an autonomous solar power plant and its components have been developed on the basis of this method in LabVIEW environment. These calculators may have a rather high visibility, ease of use and low memory requirements along with less computing time spent on calculations. The first calculator may allow recalculating capacities of loads on the power plant main supply bus as well as determining the energy consumption of loads per day. The second calculator may be used for determining the required capacity and number of batteries as well as the capacity of the charger, inverters, main supply bus and solar modules along with the solar power plant efficiency.
Highlights
Today, the electric energy production by solar power plants is used almost world-wide with a constant increase in solar cell application [1,2,3,4]
Solar power plants not connected to the industrial power grid, i.e. autonomous solar power plants (ASPPs) [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12], are designed to supply electric energy to a small country house, summer cottage, sport ground, communication center, etc., i.e. to consumers located far from the power grid so that their power supply may usually involve high financial and labour costs
A method for calculating the capacity of autonomous solar power plants and their components allowing taking into account the load variation during the day has been developed
Summary
The electric energy production by solar power plants is used almost world-wide with a constant increase in solar cell application [1,2,3,4]. This is facilitated by many factors, and the main of them is the use of alternative (renewable) energy sources which have recently become increasingly important as well as a total absence of any moving parts, due to which their lifespan may be practically unlimited. Solar power plants are constantly being improved They could be used today as additional electric power sources operating in conjunction with other sources or completely autonomously. Functional diagrams of autonomous solar power plants may contain the following: solar batteries with the required capacity for converting sunlight into electric energy; DC/DC voltage pulse converters for reducing the floating voltage of solar modules and batteries to a stable voltage and charge of batteries that could be combined into the battery charge/discharge controller; batteries for accumulating and storing electric energy; autonomous voltage inverters (AVI) for converting DC to 220 V AC along with powering household appliances
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