Monitoring thousands of distributed PV systems in the UK: Energy - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Monitoring thousands of distributed PV systems in the UK: Energy production and performance Jamie Taylor* 1 , Jonathan Leloux 2 , Aldous M. Everard 1 , Julian Briggs 1 , Alastair Buckley 1 1 Sheffield Solar, University of Sheffield 2 Instituto de Energía Solar, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain * Corresponding Author jamie.taylor@sheffield.ac.uk

Sheffield Solar • Part of Project Sunshine – “The science behind food and energy sustainability” • Funded by the UoS Higher Education Innovation Fund and the EPSRC (EP/I032541/1, EP/K022229/1) • To promote knowledge transfer and new links between industry, society and academia Jamie Taylor - Sheffield Solar 2

Microgen Database • Users donate PV generation data and receive FREE performance checking tools – Performance Ratio (PR) and peer-to-peer • Free to access performance maps, reports • Active forum • Generation predictor tool Jamie Taylor - Sheffield Solar 3

Microgen Database • 7000+ distributed PV systems • 5-10k more on the way • Historic data spanning up to 7 years • Supplied by a combination of homeowners and commercial sources • Mostly domestic scale (< 4kWp) • Various time resolutions – from 5 minutely to monthly • After data validation and filtering, 2500+ systems are analysed Jamie Taylor - Sheffield Solar 4

PR calculation Calculated from donor’s generation readings 𝑄𝑆(𝜀𝑢) = 𝜃 𝑏𝑑ℎ𝑗𝑓𝑤𝑓𝑒 (𝜀𝑢) 𝐻𝑓𝑜𝑓𝑠𝑏𝑢𝑗𝑝𝑜(𝜀𝑢) = 𝜃 𝑡𝑞𝑓𝑑 𝜃 𝑡𝑞𝑓𝑑 × 𝐽𝑠𝑠𝑏𝑒𝑗𝑏𝑢𝑗𝑝𝑜(𝜀𝑢) Provided by donor Global Horizontal Irradiation (GHI) interpolated from UK Met Office ground based pyranometers [1] as per Colantuono et al. [2]. GHI is transposed to the Global Tilted Irradiation (GTI) [1] Met Office, “Met Office Integrated Data Archive System (MIDAS) Land and Marine Surface Stations Data (1853- current),” NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre, 2012. [Online]. using Klein & Theilacker [3]. Available: http://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/. [Accessed 17 03 2015]. [2] G. Colantuono et al., “Monitoring nationwide ensembles of PV generators: Limitations and uncertainties. The case of the UK,” Solar Energy, 2014. [3] J. A. Klein and J. C. Theilacker , “An Algorithm for Calculating Monthly -Average Radiation on Inclined Surfaces,” Journal of Solar Energy Engineering, 1981. Jamie Taylor - Sheffield Solar 5

Regional Annual Yield UK Mean = 886 kWh/kWp/Year Mean Annual Mean Annual Region Yield 2013 Yield Any Year (kWh/kWp/yr) (kWh/kWp/yr) 3 1004 978 5E 1000 974 4 980 955 5W 977 952 13 951 926 1 945 921 12 930 906 2 930 906 6 907 883 9E 879 856 10 874 851 11 866 844 7E 857 834 14 848 826 15 829 807 9S 777 757 Mean 910 886 Jamie Taylor - Sheffield Solar 7

Yearly-integrated PR Mean: 84% ± 3% Jamie Taylor - Sheffield Solar 8

Seasonal evolution of monthly PR: Peaks Spring/Autumn, troughs Summer/Winter Jamie Taylor - Sheffield Solar 9

State of the art PR increase of ~12% between 2004 and 2012 (1.5% / year) Jamie Taylor - Sheffield Solar 10

Conclusions • Mean annual yield in UK is 886 𝑙𝑋ℎ/𝑙𝑋 𝑞 /𝑧𝑓𝑏𝑠 • Mean yearly-integrated PR for the years 2012-2014 was 84 ± 3% • Demonstrated presence of seasonal trends in mean monthly PR, with peaks in Spring/Autumn and troughs in Summer/Winter, consistent with France and Belgium [1, 2] • Observed increase in the overall performance of PV systems: clear increasing trend with a mean gradient of 1.5% per year. This increase in overall performance is coherent with the results of other studies that were recently carried out in other countries [1, 2, 3, 4]. [1] J. Leloux et al., “Review of the performance of residential PV systems in Belgium,” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2012. [2] J. Leloux et al., “Review of the performance of residential PV systems in France,” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2012. [3] A. Woyte , “Monitoring of photovoltaic systems: good practices and systematic analyses,” 29th European PV Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition, 2014. [4] D. C. Jordan and S. R. Kurtz, “Reliability and Geographic Trends of 50,000 Photovoltaic Systems in the USA,” 29th European PV Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition, 2014. Jamie Taylor - Sheffield Solar 11

Annual Yield Yearly-integrated PR Monthly PR Questions? State-of-the-art Jamie Taylor - Sheffield Solar 12