3 research outputs found
Characterisation of spectral and angular effects on photovoltaic modules for energy rating
This thesis presents work aimed at the development of practical and simplified methods for advanced
characterisation of PV modules while reducing energy yield estimation uncertainties, focusing on the
spectral and angular effects.
In this work, practical characterisation method to measure the spectral response (SR) curve of PV
modules have been developed based on the polychromatic method. Improvement of the method have
been achieved through the development of new measurement setup and detail evaluation of the
polychromatic fitting algorithm. Set of coloured plate with unique transmission profiles supplemented
with a smaller number of optical bandwidth filters used in the measurement setup resulted in high
throughput irradiance (the lowest is measured at 150 W/m2). High uniformity of the throughput
irradiance over the measurement plane contribute to low uncertainty in the measurement of short-circuit
current where the highest estimated uncertainty lays within the uncertainty margin for the STC
measurement, at 2.5%. Measurement of optical/electrical of device under test with associated
uncertainty are combined with the fitting algorithm through the Monte-carlo simulation method. The
uncertainty in the final determination of SR characteristic gave the value of 7%, with about ±10%
agreement between the SR curves obtained through the polychromatic method to the conventional
monochromatic method.
The measurement of angular response developed in this method employed the indoor measurement
setup with the additional turn table attachment. The evaluation of divergent light of the non-ideal light
source and the accuracy in angle adjustment of the turn table have been quantified and incorporated
into the angular response measurement as uncertainties. Partial illumination method are applied for a
reliable extraction of operating current in the measurement of PV modules with the uncertainty
estimated at 1%. 4% variation in the measurement of angular dependency of various PV devices at
high tilt angle have been realised which translate to about 1.5% difference in the simulated annual
energy performance. The application of the same simulator in the development of spectral and angular
response measurement in this work creates the potential for the angle-dependent spectral response
characterisation on module scale. This have been realised through a simulation.
Low uncertainty in energy yield is important as this indicate the risk in the investment of PV project.
Detail evaluation with accuracy and uncertainty analysis of the works to be described will further
improve the uncertainty in the measurement of spectral and angular response of PV modules, hence
better accuracy in the assessment of energy yield can be achieved
Validation of spectral response polychromatic method measurement of full size photovoltaic modules using outdoor measured data
This paper presents the validation of a
polychromatic method of spectral response measurement applied to full size mono-crystalline silicon photovoltaic
modules using outdoor measured data. The difference between short-circuit current
modelled from the measured spectral response and outdoor spectral irradiance
and the directly-measured current is below 5% which confirms the validity of the spectral response curve obtained using
the polychromatic measurement method
Spectral response measurements of photovoltaic devices using a pulsed source solar simulator
This paper presents a method for spectral response determination of photovoltaic devices using a commercially available pulsed source solar simulator and broadband filters. A fitting algorithm which is an iterative process is developed to model the spectral response curve. The method is tested on two different technologies of photovoltaic modules and the result shows that a fair agreement between the modelled and calibrated spectral response could be achieved with the improvement in the quality of measurement