New approaches for characterizing photovoltaic system performance

Westbrook, Owen; Copanas, Beth H.; Collins, Forrest D.

doi:10.1109/pvsc.2012.6317886

Cited by 3 publications

References 4 publications

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Photovoltaic system monitoring for high latitude locations

et al. 2020

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Reliable monitoring of PV systems is essential to establish efficient maintenance routines that minimize the levelized cost of electricity. The existing solutions for affordable monitoring of commercial PV systems are however inadequate for climates where snow and highly varying weather result in unstable performance metrics. The aim of this work is to decrease this instability to enable more reliable monitoring solutions for PV systems installed in these climates.Different performance metrics have been tested on Norwegian installations with a total installed capacity of 3.3 MW: i) comparison of specific yield, ii) temperature corrected performance ratio, and iii) power performance index based on both physical modelling and machine learning. The most influential effects leading to instability are identified as snow, low light, curtailment, and systematic irradiance differences over the system. The standard deviation of all the performance metrics is reduced when filters targeting these four effects are applied. Compared to general low irradiance or clear sky filtering, a greater reduction in the variation of the metrics is achieved, and more data remains in the useful dataset. The most suitable performance metrics are comparison of specific yield and performance index based on machine learning modelling.The analysis highlights two paths to accomplish increased reliability of PV monitoring systems without increased hardware costs. First, better reliability can be achieved by selecting a suitable performance metric. Second, the variability of the performance metric can be reduced by utilizing filters that specifically target the origin of the variability instead of using standard literature thresholds.

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Photovoltaic system monitoring for high latitude locations

et al. 2020

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Ambient temperature correction of photovoltaic system performance data

Rupnik

Westbrook

2014

2014 IEEE 40th Photovoltaic Specialist Conference (PVSC)

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Analysis of Photovoltaic System Energy Performance Evaluation Method

Kurtz¹,

Newmiller²,

Kimber³

et al. 2013

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Documentation of the energy yield of a large photovoltaic (PV) system over a substantial period can be useful to measure a performance guarantee, as an assessment of the health of the system, for verification of a performance model to then be applied to a new system, or for a variety of other purposes. Although the measurement of this performance metric might appear to be straightforward, there are a number of subtleties associated with variations in weather and imperfect data collection that complicate the determination and data analysis. A performance assessment is most valuable when it is completed with a very low uncertainty and when the subtleties are systematically addressed, yet currently no standard exists to guide this process.This report summarizes a draft methodology for an Energy Performance Evaluation Method, the philosophy behind the draft method, and the lessons that were learned by implementing the method. The general philosophy behind the methodology includes the following features:• The method is performance-model agnostic.• The performance model must not be inadvertently modified, when being implemented on the measured meteorological data sets, relative to the model that was used on the historical data set.

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New approaches for characterizing photovoltaic system performance

Cited by 3 publications

References 4 publications

Photovoltaic system monitoring for high latitude locations

Photovoltaic system monitoring for high latitude locations

Ambient temperature correction of photovoltaic system performance data

Analysis of Photovoltaic System Energy Performance Evaluation Method

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