Solar Energy Capacity Assessment and Performance Evaluation of Designed Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Systems †

Abstract

One of the most common sustainable energy resources that contributes a significant portion of the energy produced from renewable resources is solar photovoltaic energy. The research presented in this paper examines the behaviour of a 150.7 kWp grid-connected PV energy generation system in either feeding electrical loads to a site (a public university, GCU Faisalabad) or feeding into the utility grid when the generation from the PV system is greater than the demand from the on-site load. PVSyst 7.4 software was used in the system simulation together with Meteonorm to produce and measure climatic information sets (solar irradiance, ambient temperature, and wind speed). The analysis of the simulated energy yields included determining the optimal energy generation photovoltaic array, the energy that is fed into the utility network, normalised energy generation per installed kWp, and performance ratio. The computed annual worldwide incident energy on the collector without optical adjustments was 1764.0 kWh/m2, and the annual effective global irradiance after optical losses was 1654.7 kWh/m2. With this irradiation, the solar (PV) array produced 218.12 MWh of DC energy annually, whereas 211.70 MWh of AC energy was injected into the national grid. The designed PV system collected 0.87 kilowatt-hour/kWp/day, with system losses of 0.120 kilowatt-hour /kWp/day and 3.85 kilowatt-hour /kWp/day of produced useful energy. The measured average yearly performance ratio (PR) was 79.64%. In the month of January, the highest PR value of 85.4% was achieved.