Performance Metrics Analysis Tool for Solar Energy Plants

Introduction

Due to the decreasing levelized costs of solar and wind energies, several renewable energy-based power plants are being added to the energy markets. Various stakeholders in the energy supply industry (ESI) want to know the overall performance of the energy production facilities for various purposes. Even the regulator expects the independent power producers (IPPs) to report on their overall performance with details. Thus, the performance analysis of a solar photovoltaic (PV) plant is crucial to ensuring its efficient operation and maximum energy production. The determination of overall performance and various related parameters can be complex as a lot of data is required for the analysis and several parameters need to be computed. Performance analysis requires a lot of data as input, and that includes historical energy production details, weather data (irradiance, temperature, wind speed), equipment specifications, and historical maintenance data. Key parameters in the performance metrics include performance ratio (PR), capacity factor (CF), energy yield, energy losses, etc. Then financial analysis includes the determination of Return on investment (ROI) and payback period based on actual energy production and system costs (Musti & Kapali, 2021). Due to natural environmental operating conditions, solar energy is indeed intermittent, and thus it is required to determine the weather impact on the plant. For this, data for parameters such as irradiance, temperature, wind speed, etc. is to be collected from the specific geolocation, and then their impact on the performance of the plant needs to be determined (Musti, 2020a).

The most vital factor that plays a role in solar energy production is the geographic location of the solar plant itself. Grid scale solar power plants use several hundreds of photovoltaic panels that are typically installed on rotatable mounts so that they can be rotated based on the movement of the Sun. Naturally a lot of land space is required and thus such plants cannot be located in urban areas (Sastry & Sahadeo, 2015). The plants are connected to the grid through what is called a Point of Common Coupling (PCC). Lengths of the two distances, one from the plant to the PCC and then the other from PCC to the grid; play a significant role in losses incurred in the lines, the amount of energy transferred from the plant to the grid and thus overall revenues to the IPP (Hauwanga & Musti, 2022). Then, the energy payback time of solar energy is usually long, thus solar energy IPPs would need to set up the plants in regions or areas that would maximise the power output of the PV modules. This is because the amount of sunlight received can vary significantly based on the location; and this in turn affects the efficiency of the solar PV modules and overall energy output of the plant. The amount of sunlight received has a considerable effect on solar irradiance, temperature, and daylight hours. These are key parameters that contribute to the plant performance. Other factors that can influence the geolocation of the IPP are the climate, weather, and shading. Thus, location of the plant, location of IPP and the shading etc., are important parameters.