Analysis of Photovoltaic System Under Different Environmental Conditions and Optimizing The Energy Self-Consumption

Abstract

ABSTRACT Among the types of solar systems, the photovoltaic (PV) systems become more widely used and widespread. However, there are some factors and requirements must be taken into account when installing and operating these systems. The temperature, dust and shade are considered the most important factors that negatively on the power production of PV system. While, increasing the self-consumption of solar energy to reach the self-sufficiency for PV system is the main goal in achieving the optimal use of the PV systems. Therefore, this study was divided into two parts. The first part was dealt with an experimental investigation to studay the effect of temperature and dust on the PV module by fabricating two twin PV systems. While, HOMMER software was used in the second part to increase the self-consumption of solar energy to reach the self-sufficiency for PV system by sizing the number of batteries and by suggesting fuel cell (FC) as another storage unit. The experimental results showed that the maximum temperature of the dirty PV module was recorded 46.5 °C at 28th February as compared with the clean module that recorded 49 °C. The influence of accumulating the dust on the PV module results decreasing its energy production by 9%. On the other side, the results of HOMMER software showed that the self-sufficiency was achieved in third of June 2021, first of October 2021 and first of April 2022 at four battery number, while in first of January 2022 at eight battery number respectively with self-consumption about 14,13 kWh, 9.88 kWh, 21.28 kWh and 13.72 kWh. In addition, the largest energy provided by FC was recorded 29% from the required load. Furthermore, the self-consumption of energy was increase from 77.64% to 98.72% when the capacity of FC changed from 0.5 kW to 2.5 kW.