Performance analysis of 100 kWp grid connected Si-poly photovoltaic system using PVsyst simulation tool

This paper analyzes the simulated performance of 100 kWp grid connected Si-poly photovoltaic system. This study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of installing a photovoltaic system for supplying the electric load of an educational institute. The simulated system comprises 323 Si-poly PV modules. Each PV module has a rating of 310 Wp. All the PV modules are arranged in 17 strings, with each string made up of 19 modules in series. Four solar inverters, each having a rating of 20 kW are used for interconnecting with the grid through a utility meter. The simulation is carried out using PVsyst V6.52 software. Meteonorm 7.1 weather data sets of solar radiation and ambient temperature from the PVsyst database has been utilized for this analysis. The simulation results were analyzed for assessing the performance of the photovoltaic system. This includes evaluating the effective energy output of the PV array, energy injected into the grid, performance ratio and other normalized energy productions per installed kWp. The 100 kWp PV system generates 165.38 MWh/year, out of which only 161.6 MWh/year is injected into the grid. The annual performance ratio is around 80 % and the normalized productions of inverter output or final system yield i.e. useful energy is 4.42 kWh/kWp/day. Finally the loss diagram over the whole year is also computed.