Floating photovoltaics performance simulation approach

Abstract

Floating photovoltaics (FPVs) provide various benefits especially where land is scarce (e.g., reducing land occupancy, water evaporation and environment control…), or when they are combined with hydropower plants (enhanced capacity factor and green energy generation). Software such as PV∗SOL, SAM and PVSyst® are commonly used for the design and simulation of land-based photovoltaic (PV) systems. However, when it comes to the simulation of photovoltaics installed on water surface, such software does not offer the option to directly simulate FPV systems.In this work, a new approach combining MATLAB and Rhino/Grasshopper environments is proposed for the assessment of FPV systems performance. The approach is divided into various steps considering major influencing parameters such as temperature, irradiance, albedo, PV modelling, panel rows spacing, tilt angle, as well as the benefits of including a tracking mechanism. The proposed approach was validated against PV∗SOL simulations for land-based PV systems with a small deviation of less than 2.4%. FPVs simulations considering climatic conditions of Štěchovice, Czechia, showed an increase of the performance in the range of 3% compared to terrestrial PVs. This result is in accordance with some published studies based on real FPVs installations. Finally, the developed approach was applied in the simulations of two large-scale FPV systems with different designs (fixed and with a tracking mechanism) including economical aspects.

Keywords

• Floating photovoltaics (FPV)
• Solar tracking
• FPV design
• Energy yield
• Techno-economic analysis