Comparison of normal and weather corrected performance ratio of photovoltaic solar plants in hot and cold climates

摘要

Performance Ratio (PR) is one of the best performancemetrics used to assess solar power plant performance. PRis also used for commercial acceptance of an installed PV power plants. If the PR is tested in different climatic conditionsor seasons, there are bias errors, affecting the contractual acceptance testing. PR is often corrected to theStandard Test Conditions (STC), resulting in higher PR sincemodules usually operate at higher temperatures. Thisresearch work utilizes NREL's advanced methodology to determine weather corrected PR of PV power plants insix different geographical locations and climatic regions. The Solar PV plant performance is simulated to get thenormal PR as per IEC 61724-1:2017. Percentage variation ofWeather corrected PR with Normal PR is determinedfor all these six geographical regions and compared. The weather corrected PR of Montana (with the lowestannual average temperature of 1.58 °C.) PV power plant has a maximum variation of 7.64 from the normalPR during the summer and ?8.61 variation in December during the winter. The weather corrected PR ofKuzhalmannam (with the highest annual average temperature of 27.28 °C) PV power plant has amaximumvariationof only 1.16 fromthe normal PR during summer and a variation of?0.91 in July during the rainy season.It is concluded that the metric of weather-corrected PR gains paramount importance for colder areas, whereas ithas minimal influence for tropical regions.