Development of a practical method of estimating electric power from various photovoltaic technologies with high precision

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop a method of estimating the electric power from various photovoltaic technologies with high precision. The actual outdoor performance of eight kinds (12 types) of photovoltaic (PV) modules has been measured since January 2012 in order to verify the precision of the method. Using ambient climatic datasets including solar irradiance, module temperature, and solar spectrum, the performance of these PV modules is corrected to the performance under standard test conditions (STC), which should be constant ideally. The results indicate that the performance of bulk crystalline silicon (c-Si) and copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) PV modules can be estimated with high precision (approximately less than ±2%). However, the estimation precision of thin-film Si and cadmium telluride (CdTe) PV modules is low because of the initial light-induced degradation and seasonal variation due to metastability.