Modeling of photovoltaic based power stations for reliability studies using Markov chains

This paper presents a methodology for modeling photovoltaic based power stations using state duration sampling technique and Monte Carlo Simulation. To consider the stochastic variations of the output power, a multi-state model is proposed to simulate system behavior. Transition of states is achieved employing Markov Chain rules. The developed model is suitable for simulating the power production of stand-alone or grid connected photovoltaic based power and can easily be integrated with the two state models of conventional generators. The proposed model has been implemented to simulate an existing real life station located in Egypt and has been integrated with the reliability model of the unified network of Egypt to calculate system reliability indices. The results obtained are presented and discussed.