Comparative Study of Performance of Three Different Photovoltaic Technologies

Abstract

In this project, simulation approach is used for the comparative analysis of different photovoltaic (PV) technologies, namely; poly crystalline, mono crystalline and thin film PV. The PVsyst industrial PV system planning software solution was selected to model and simulate the entire PV system. The meteorological data used in the study are compiled from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) worldwide meteorological database. The meteorological data include 22-year monthly and annual averaged insolation incident on a horizontal surface (kwh/m2/day) and 22-year monthly averaged air temperature. A hypothetical electric load demand data is used for the simulation. According to the results, the thin film PV gave highest performance ratio (PR = 61.8%) and highest energy yield per year of 5516.8 kWh/year. However, in comparing PV generation technologies, conversion efficiency is the most important parameter to be determined. The results showed that the array efficiency of the poly crystalline and mono crystalline are comparable, whereas that of thin film is much lower, 4.10% as against the array efficiency of Poly crystalline (7.76%) and the array efficiency of mono crystalline (7.62%). Also, among the three technologies tested, the poly crystalline required minimum area of 33m2. So, the poly crystalline technology is preferred among the three PV technologies considered in this study.

Keywords

• Photovoltaic
• Poly Crystalline Silicon
• Mono Crystalline Silicon and A-Sih Thin Film
• PVSyst
• Stand Alone PV System
• Unit Cost Of Energy
• Loss of Load Probability
• Array Efficiency