The power generated from the photovoltaic module is directly related to the magnitude of total incident solar radiation on the surface of the solar module. The total incident solar radiation depends on the location, tilt angle, and orientation of the solar module. In this paper, generic models were developed that determine the seasonal and annual optimal tilt angle of the Photovoltaic module at any location in Ethiopia without using meteorological data. Both isotropic and anisotropic diffuse solar radiation models were used to estimate monthly, seasonal, and annual optimal tilt angles. The monthly average daily global horizontal solar radiation for a total of 44 cities -32 for training and 12 for testing were obtained from the National Aeronautical and Space Administration database, and algorithms were developed and implemented using MATLAB and R programming software to obtain optimum tilt angle and regression models. The study showed that the developed model accurately estimates the optimal tilt angle with the minimum statistical validation errors. It is also found that 5.11% to 6.275% (isotropic) and 5.72% to 6.346% (anisotropic models) solar radiation energy is lost when using the yearly average fixed optimal tilt angle as compared with the monthly optimal tilt angle. The result of this study was also validated by comparing it with the previously published works, PVGIS and PVWatt online software. The graphical abstract is included in the supplementary file.

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The electric power generated from different electricity sources are not used efficiently by end users in the world. This is due to the loss of power supplied in the case of electricity transmission and distribution to residential, commercial, and industrial loads. Even if the loss of power in the power system cannot be avoided 100%, it should be reduced to the minimum optimal value. The loss of power in the radial feeders can be minimized using an optimally allocated photovoltaic (PV) generation system by considering the information of geography, solar irradiance of the site, and space availability, which should not have shadow from large buildings and trees. The PV generation system eliminates the problem of power demand by enhancing the capacity of the power network as well as by reducing the depletion and consumption of fossil fuel resources. To reduce power loss and improve system loading capacity for demand response, the integration and finding the optimal place of photovoltaic generation take high concern from power system operators and technicians. The optimal allocation of PV has been done using the Genetic Algorithm (GA) for optimization of a multiobjective function with different constraints. The main objective of this paper is to minimize the power loss of the radial distribution networks by maintaining the phase voltage of the load in balance and improving the drop in voltage along the phase. So, GA is used to determine the best location and capacity of PV generation that can reduce the loss of power in the system. The IEEE-33 bus system is used to test the proposed method. Generally, using the GA and GIS methods results in a high accuracy for optimal placement of PV generation in the IEEE-33 bus radial feeder and enables to reduce the loss of power during transmission and distribution by maintaining the power quality for consumers.

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