Performance Of PV Plant Research Articles

Energy Performance Analysis of On-Grid Solar Photovoltaic System- a Practical Case Study

This research paper presents an experimental investigation for performance evaluation and energy efficiency estimation of a specific grid connected PV power system under real meteorological conditions. The basic installation and data of 10 MW Oryx photovoltaic plant (OPVP) installed in Ma'an, Jordan is introduced. The main objective of this research is to show and examine the obtained results and build a good database for Ma'an in particular and Jordan in general. In addition, promote the use of solar photovoltaic plants as a clean and cheap alternative energy source, whether on-grid or standalone. This approach relies on a genuine atmosphere conditions including, correspondence system and meteorological station. The weather data are obtained from three different weather stations in Ma'an, Jordan to compare and insure the accurate estimation. Last year, OPVP supplied the national electric power company in Jordan with 24.157 GWh. This integration was considered satisfactory during this period, where the annual energy efficiency of the OPVP was 12.1% and the average annual value of the performance ratio was 78.14%, and the average annual capacity factor was 26.34%. By comparing the results with the actual values, it is ascertained that the proposed approach has the superiority over estimating the energy efficiency and performance of PV plants. Moreover, the outcomes obtained can be utilized as rules for the use of solar PV power plants in Jordan and other comparative climatic nations.

The effect of wind direction on the performance of solar PV plants

The impact of wind direction on the overall performance of a utility-scale PV plant was studied by analyzing field data from Hadley solar farm in the UK. The solar PV plant utilizes a fixed-tilt system with the PV panels facing south at a 20 degree angle. The hypothesis is that when wind blows from the south the total power production of the solar PV plant increases in comparison with non-southerly wind events, provided that all other determining factors, such as solar irradiance, ambient temperature, and wind speed are the same. During the case study of January 1 to July 1, 2017, 42 pairs were identified, each of which includes two cases with equal solar irradiance, equal ambient temperature, and equal wind speeds but different wind directions; in one case wind is from the north and in the other one wind blows from the south. The hypothesis was found to be true across all 42 pairs, i.e., the power production of the solar PV plant was always greater in the event of southerly winds. One takeaway from this finding is that wind direction and wind speed frequencies need to be taken into account along with other climatic factors to have an optimal site selection for establishing a solar PV plant. The more frequent the southerly wind occurs, the more power can be extracted from the PV panels. The other practical conclusion of this study is that it is more efficient to build fixed-tilt solar PV plants on areas oriented along the west-east direction.

Impact of Photovoltaic Tied to Electrical Grid System On Power Quality

The High Penetration of PV power into the existing electricity grid needs more study and analysis to enable safe operation. One of the major concerns is the impact of PV system on grid power quality .Poor power quality could cause disturbance and financial losses due to the use of power inverters. Harmonic distortion is a serious power quality problem that reduces power quality and consequently causes a number of problems to consumer and network. This Paper proposes a new strategy for power quality improvement in a three-phase grid connected PV Inverter with central and string configuration and controlling on them using Sinusoidal pulse width modulation and space vector modulation methods with LCL Filter .This paper investigates PV Inverter configuration and impact of them on PV Plant Performance and harmonics that produced by PV inverter. The design, modeling, and analysis of a grid-tied PV system were performed in the PSCAD software simulation environment. The simulations of Harmonic Distortion (Total Demand Distortion & Total Harmonic Distortion) were applied at Point of Coming Coupling and the results obtained were compared with the limits specified by IEEE STD 519-1992 standards.

A Comprehensive Solution for Development of Large Scale Grid-Connected PV Generation in China

To combat climate change and fulfill the national target of having 15% of primary energy from non-fossil fuels by 2020, China's central government is making every effort to promote PV generation, especially in the context of deteriorating export markets for China's PV industry, resulting from anti-dumping and anti-subsidy campaigns launched by United States and European Union. PV generation PV generation is set to boom in coming years in China. Although there is ambitious planning of building large scale ground-mounted PV plants in the Northwest of China, more than half of the installations are expected to be customer-sited small scale distributed systems. Because PV generation, particularly customer-sited PV systems represents a totally new pattern of power production and consumption. China's electricity system, which has been originally designed for centralized power delivery, is not fully prepared to accommodate large scale PV generation from the technical point of view. Besides, governmental policies and operational regulations are not able to match the need of these new comers. This paper works out a comprehensive solution for integration of large scale distributed PV, which consists of technical strategy, regulatory strategy and policy strategy. Firstly, electricity grids and PV systems should be directionally technically adapted to each other. oGrid friendly PV plants” requires that PV plants should be equipped with advanced technologies to improve the visibility, controllability and predictability, bringing the performance of PV plants increasingly close to that of conventional power plants. Secondly, with high penetration of distributed PV generation, grid dispatch centers should have necessary monitoring and control over these dispersed generating systems, which are supposed to follow the instructions issued by grid operators. Thirdly, incentive polies should be in accordance with national medium-and long term planning, with consideration of minimizing social cost. Policies should also be foreseeable and persistent for all the investors. Based on the framework of the comprehensive solution for PV generation, this paper elaborates major experience drawn from Germany with high PV penetration and illustrates how Germany has successfully integrated large scale distributed PV systems from the technical, regulatory and policy aspect respectively. Finally, it comes up with relevant recommendations for the development of PV generation in China: to speed up the process of establishing and improving the system of technical requirements, to draw up and release detailed operational rules on distributed PV generating systems and replace unified FIT for ground-mounted systems with differentiated FIT. Distributed customer-sited PV systems should be promoted by subsidizing the self-consumed electricity in the form of RMB cent per kWh.

Climate change external cost appraisal of electricity generation systems from a life cycle perspective: the case of Greece

Abstract The aim of the present work is to estimate the carbon footprint of the Greek electricity sector and the associated damages. This is being realized by quantifying the external cost related with the climate change airborne emissions (i.e. carbon dioxide) generated during all stages of the power plants life cycle in Greece. For this purpose, the paper applies the EcoSenseLE tool, together with the basic principles of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The examined external cost has been calculated for seven types of power plants. Results show that hydro and wind power plants have an excellent performance; close to them is the performance of PV and biomass-fired power plants. The performance of natural gas-fired power plants is good, while the performance of oil-fired power plants is, as it is expected poor. Lignite clearly has the worst performance, which affects the average external cost of the sector, since it is the dominant energy source in electricity production in Greece. Regarding the life cycle stages, for thermal systems, the climate change external cost is primarily made of CO2 emitted at the power plant, while in hydro, wind and PV systems, it is totally associated with the plant construction stage. Moreover, the paper includes also issues regarding the evolution of the examined footprint within the next years, considering the various Greek national policies and measures that have been announced and started to be realized; the cost/benefit analysis (CBA) of these policies and measures based on this footprint; and the investigation if this CBA is being affected by the CO2 abatement cost associated with the various external cost estimation approaches.

A method to evaluate the effect of complementarity in time between hydro and solar energy on the performance of hybrid hydro PV generating plants

The combination of hydroelectric and photovoltaic sources of energy in a generation system may seem unfeasible due to the still quite high costs of the photovoltaic plants. However in the next few decades, significant reductions in those costs are to be expected. Moreover, this combination may reduce the cost of plants implemented in low hydroelectric potential sites for which main system interconnection costs prove prohibitive. The study of hybrid hydro-PV generating plants allows the evaluation of the use of water reservoirs and battery banks as alternatives for energy storage within a system. It also allows the evaluation of the advantages of generation from complementary energy sources. The objectives of this paper is to propose the concept of a theoretical performance limit for the plants and propose a method for the determination of this performance limit using computer simulations with idealized energy availability functions. Using this method, the effect of different degrees of complementarity in time of the energy resources on the performance of hydro PV plants is studied. It has been observed that, as expected, the smallest failure indexes measuring the energy supply to the consumers are associated to the best complementarity in time indexes. The results of the simulations led to the synthesis of failure index curves, as functions of the different degrees of complementarity in time, with data obtained solely with the utilization of idealized functions describing the energy availabilities, as proposed in this work. The results so obtained are a preliminary set treating the influence of the complementarity characteristics on the performance of hybrid plants based on hydro and solar energies and show how the complementarity characteristics may be used to design hybrid power generation systems showing improved efficiency. The subsequent research work shall proceed to at least two different phases. In the first one, the method exposed in the present work shall be applied to real data and compared to the operation of existing hydro PV plants. In the second phase the obtained relations of the performance of the system to the different degrees of complementarity shall be confronted with design parameters of hydroelectric-photovoltaic plants based on complementary resources.