Performance Analysis of PV Systems: Case study of Palestine Technical University (PTUK) PV Plant

Abstract

Performance ratio is one of the indicators used to describe the effectiveness of the PV systems. The sustainability of the PV system year after year as well as its reliability can be checked by measuring the performance ratio each year. This indicator will also enable us to carry out a comparison between the performances of different PV systems. In this paper, the performance ratios for five PV systems installed on the roof tops of some of PTUK university buildings have been calculated on monthly and yearly basis. The analysis has been carried out using the available data (energy production and solar irradiation) for the year 2019. It was found that the performance ratio has higher values for May and September in comparison with other months. On the other hand, its lowest values were obtained in winter months. This trend can be observed for all of the PV clusters on the five buildings. When taking into account the overall system, the highest value for the performance ratio was 0.89, which was for September, whereas its lowest value of 0.70 was obtained in January. The performance ratio, which was calculated on yearly basis for the overall system, was found to be 0.80. When considering each building separately, the lowest value was 0.44 for the “Services” building whereas the highest value was 0.94 for the Science building.