Multi-Year and Typical Year Data for Solar Energy System in South Korea

Abstract

Typical meteorological year (TMY) data has significant importance for solar resource assessment, as well as for building performance analysis. The necessity of high-accuracy TMY data has been well known for many years for the financial viability of solar long-term planing project as it represents long-term weather features. However, the TMY does not mean the use of real-time data; it is therefore important to determine the accuracy of the TMY dataset. In this study, the solar energy performance of TMY was evaluated quantitatively by comparing it to multi-year average weather data (2008-2017) based on the statistical analysis method. The PV power output were produced by using 100kW photovoltaic system based on PVsyst software at six sites. The results showed that the difference between the TMY-PV power output and long-term PV power output (measured with percentage error) are smaller than 9%, which means there is close-fit agreement between TMY and long-term averages PV power output. These findings suggests that TMY can provide reliable estimation of PV power in the feasibility study of PV project.