Abstract
Renewable energies have experienced a great growth in recent years, and nowadays participate in the set of energies used in developed and developing countries to produce electricity. Among these technologies, photovoltaic energy, which produces clean electricity from the Sun, is the one that has grown faster, and its implementation all over the world is a guarantee of a solid and efficient energy technology. Nevertheless, in order to design very efficient solar energy systems, it is crucial to have a good solar radiation database. There are databases where it is possible to find information on solar radiation, but only for horizontal surfaces. Afterwards, it is necessary to transform the horizontal solar radiation data to tilt solar radiation data. This transformation is not easy, and the application of complex mathematical equations, and expressions, and difficult algorithms must be done. An application called virtual laboratory “OrientSol 3.0” which allows the user to easily obtain the solar radiation for any tilt surface has been developed by us. Thus, our main objectives in this paper are to present the developed virtual laboratory and to explain its main features and core functionalities. In order to point out the difficulties and complexity of the transformation of horizontal solar radiation data to tilt solar radiation data, we will present some examples of the results this application provides and compare the solar radiation data supplied with this application with some other solar radiation data obtained from other databases.
Highlights
Energy is a fundamental aspect of global economic development
We present OrientSol 3.0, a complete and updated application [5] in which the user, through the virtual laboratory, can know beforehand the design of the photovoltaic system, as well as all necessary information about the available solar resource at the location of the photovoltaic installation
OrientSol 3.0 is a software package that is able to perform the study of the orientation and optimum inclination of the modules that integrate a photovoltaic system and it allows the user to calculate the generated energy for different inclinations
Summary
Energy is a fundamental aspect of global economic development. Our social model is based on the use of energy in its different modalities: renewable and non-renewable. Photovoltaic solar energy has demonstrated the simplicity and reliability of its generation technology This reliability has made it possible that, in 2014, investments in renewables exceed $300 billion USD in the world, 16% more than in 2013. It is necessary to transform the horizontal solar radiation data to tilt solar radiation data This transformation is not easy, and the application of complex mathematical equations and expressions and difficult algorithms must be done [5]. Many of this research gives recommendations based on the latitude of the place, depending on the area of study. The third section shows the software developed, describing its main features; and the fourth one shows two case studies for two Spanish cities, where the energy that could be generated from a photovoltaic system is quantified depending on its inclination.
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