LONG-TERM ASSESMENT OF A BUILDING INTEGRATED, GRID CONNECTED PV SYSTEM
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59627/cbens.2014.2255Keywords:
Photovoltaic Solar Energy, Photovoltaic Reliability, Operation, Maintenance and Replacement (OM&R)Abstract
Photovoltaic (PV) generation is an electric energy source that directly converts sun energy in a silent and clean way, avoiding the use of moving parts. This makes this energy source a highly reliable and robust alternative, with low requirements of operation, maintenance and replacement (OM&R). The reliability associated to PV generators involves all the system components, such as: PV modules, cables, junction boxes, inverters, protection devices and data acquisition systems. All those items can fail and their lifecycle is related to the climatic characteristics of where they are installed, and also to the electric influences of the PV system and the grid. PV modules typically have around 20 to 30 years nominal power warranty. The manufacturers, due to the large accumulated installed capacity, and extensive lab tests, can insure that PV modules will behave in accordance with the corresponding warranty contracts. Equipment manufacturers normally use MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) tests to assess failures in the products. Many OM&R parameters used for the sizing and economic viability analysis of PV systems are normally provided by the equipment manufacturers, with results widely available on the specialized literature. Quite often, operational parameters are neglected in the simulation of system performance. The main parameters affecting the performance of a PV system are: degradation of the PV modules over the years; system unavailability due to failures at the generator, inverters or grid; inverters lifecycle; system cleaning due to the dirt accumulation at the modules, operational temperature, spectral content of the solar irradiation at the site, among others. Most of the PV systems used as case studies for determination of the OM&R parameters of a system are installed in regions that do not present the same climatic characteristics experienced by PV systems installed in Brazil. In these cases, the use of those parameters can result in uncertainties on the expectation of energy generation and economic viability analysis of the PV systems. The present work aims to evaluate the 15 years of operational data provided by the first building-integrated PV system installed in Brazil. The 2kWp PV generator installed in Florianópolis, operates since September 1997 and is comprised by 54 opaque modules and 14 semitransparent, double-junction amorphous silicon (a-Si) modules. The main parameters which were analyzed in this work, using the data provided by the system, are related to the OM&R of a PV generator building-integrated and connected to the grid. Historical data of the solar irradiation at the plane of the PV system were also evaluated.
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References
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