Experimental Study on PV Degradation Loss Assessment of Stand-Alone Photovoltaic (SAPV) Array in Field: A New Simplified Comparative Analytical Approach

Abstract

In the present study, a comparative study has been made on some quality factors: PV production factor, PV degradation loss factor and PV temperature-dependent factors of on-field PV array, placed at Centre for Energy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India. Three PV arrays are installed in IIT Delhi, named as: subarray (make1-Siemens), subarray (make2-CEL) and entire PV array (combination of both subarrays). A new terminology PV degradation loss factor has been proposed. The concept of overall PV degradation loss factors due to the combined effect of various constant losses due to long-term exposure of existing PV arrays as well as variable losses and operating temperature have been introduced. An attempt has been made to develop a new simplified methodology to evaluate the overall PV degradation loss factors (due to the combined effect of various monthly variable losses and the constant (fixed) losses) for on-field PV array/subarrays on the basis of observations measured during experimentation and numeric computations. In the observation, subarray (make1-Siemens) is found to be higher for generating high electrical energy on-field condition.