Performance modeling and assessment of different photo voltaic arrays for Indian climatic conditions

The need for utilizing alternative sources of energy has increased in the recent past due to the diminishing supplies of fossil fuels and increasing CO₂ emission. Out of all the renewable energy sources, solar energy stands out to be the most ubiquitous and abundant source of energy. Solar power offers a wide array of advantages over fossil fuels from renewability and cleanliness to reliability and independence. To augment the usage of solar PV in both residential and commercial utilities, the expected performance of the PV arrays at various locations and climatic conditions must be made available to the user. Performance models are generally used to predict the estimated power output from the PV plant at a specified location in different climatic conditions. This paper is a step towards the performance modeling of different photo voltaic array likePoly-crystalline, Mono-crystalline and Micro-morph technology at Bangalore region. After extensive data analysis and data mining work, a mathematical correlation is developed with suitable assumptions for the above said technologies and the same is validated with the experimental data from the plant and PVSYST model. The results are encouraging as the developed model showsa close match with the measured output.