First-year performance of a PV plant in Jordan compared to PV plants in the region

Abstract

This chapter presents the first-year (2014) performance analysis of a 276 kWp grid-connected roof-type solar photovoltaic (PV) plant located at the campus of Al-Ahliyya Amman University (AAU) in Jordan using monitored data. The plant is installed on the 3000 m2 roof of the arena building on the university’s campus. The array consists of 1176 modules with 2 orientations, 10° and 15°. The PV array is configured in such a way that the system includes 14 panels in parallel with 14 inverters. The plant is equipped with a monitoring system that is connected to the Internet and provides data on a daily basis. The study shows that the actual and estimated specific energy productions are 1639 and 1726 kWh/kWp/year, respectively. The annual capacity factor and performance ratio are found to be 18.7 and 87.5 %, respectively. The actual energy production is found to be 452,406 kWh/year, whereas the estimated annual energy production is found to be 476,467 kWh, as calculated using the PVsyst v6.32 software. The measured and estimated yields are in close agreement with each other, with a relative error of around 5 %. It is found that the actual yield is at its maximum in July and minimum in January. The analyzed plant is compared to PV plants worldwide, particularly in detail to a PV plant in Syria. The comparison shows that the overall performance of the AAU plant is excellent.