Utpa Solar System efficiency

Abstract

Nowadays a lot of interest has been shown worldwide into Solar Energy Systems, since they represent revolutionary way to generate electrical power in a cleaner way, in order to help protect the environment. Due to the capacity factor of Solar Photovoltaic, which is at most 30% we need to know how efficient our arrays are, and to ensure the efficiency is maximized in order to get a greater power production. The research motivation of this paper is the development of a database system to store the gathered information from solar energy production, and to generate customized reports for the purpose of analyzing and comparing the amount of power within the two arrays that we have in campus, and to also study security aspect of data collection in future for smart grid project. Our research objective is to measure the actual efficiencies of each one of our arrays in an accurate way. The Solar System we have designed is the research methodology that gives the students access to a wide variety of data generated by the Solar Radiation Lab, ENGR and TXU arrays. They will have to calculate different angles of the sun at diverse hours of the day and the solar noon time in a manual way using formulas presented in this paper in order to compare their theoretical results with the actual measurements found in the system. A compound of class exercises, homework and laboratory experiments have been designed to introduce this topic in a more enthusiastic, practical and visual way in order to enhance understanding about the great potential found in solar energy. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.