Analysis of the VISTA photovoltaic facility-system performance

Author

Rahman, Satfur ; Shrestha, Govinda ; Lahouar, Saher ; Jockell, John

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Virginia Polytech. Inst. & State Univ., Blacksburg, VA, USA

Volume

5

Issue

2

fYear

1990

fDate

6/1/1990 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

245

Lastpage

251

Abstract

The performance of the Virginia Integrated Solar Test Arrays is reported and analyzed. The test period reported spans from January 1987 to December 1988. The performance of single-crystal and polycrystalline modules under diverse sky conditions over time while single-axis, two-axis tracking, or fixed tilt arrays are used is examined. Even though the photovoltaic modules performed as expected, the overall outage rates for the two years have ranged from 31.3% to 51.7% for the three subfields. Causes of these outages include PCU trips due to ground fault currents and failures of the insolation recorders, the data acquisition system, the trackers and the modules. The observations suggest that there has not been any significant deterioration of the module performance over this period

Keywords

solar cell arrays; VISTA photovoltaic facility; Virginia Integrated Solar Test Arrays; data acquisition system; failures; fixed tilt arrays; ground fault currents; insolation recorders; performance; polycrystalline modules; single axis tracking; single crystal modules; sky conditions; two-axis tracking; Data acquisition; Laboratories; Performance analysis; Photovoltaic systems; Power conditioning; Senior members; Solar power generation; Student members; System performance; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Energy Conversion, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0885-8969

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/60.107217

Filename

107217