Preliminary monitoring and performance evaluation of photovoltaic system in rural buildings in severe cold area

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years, the photovoltaic (PV) systems of rural buildings have been demonstratively applied in severe cold areas of China. However, the lack of power generation performance and economic evaluation results is not conducive to the PV promotion. This study innovatively presented the performance and economic evaluation of the grid-connected rural building applied PV (BAPV) system in Hailar, China from the predicted and measured data. The measured monthly PV outputs were counted and analyzed from the year 2020 to 2021. The ambient temperature, solar radiation and predicted output were obtained by the software of PVSYST. The performance ratio (PR), efficiency and loss were investigated, and their relationship with temperature and sunshine was analyzed. According to the measured data and theoretical calculation, the payback periods and profits were calculated. The results indicate that the measured output yields are 14,123.70 kWh in 2020 and 13,265.10 kWh in 2021, which are 6.05%~11.76% lower than the predicted value due to snow cover in the cold months. The monthly predicted array output is about 3.4% higher than the energy output. The array capture loss (L C ) is 14.99–34.80 kWh and the system loss (L S ) is 29.6–5.81 kWh. The PR is 83.30%-99.80%. The average system efficiency and array efficiency are 16.15% and 15.62%. The lower PR and efficiency are caused by the high temperature. The measured and theoretical payback periods are 6.7 and 5.6 years, respectively. The theoretical annual rate of income is 4828.15 Chinese yuan (CNY). These results provide an important reference for the promotion of rural residential BAPV in severe cold areas.