Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers standard, IEEE
PAR 1479 “Recommended Practice for the Evaluation of Photovoltaic
Module Energy Production” requires the module temperature
to predict power/energy production as a function of ambient temperature,
wind speed, wind direction, total irradiance and relative humidity.
Since the thermal properties of each module type may differ from
others, a method of obtaining the actual module temperature from
the ambient data is needed. A group of modules has been installed
to gather data at NREL’s Solar Radiation Research Laboratory
(SRRL) on top of South Table Mountain in Golden, Colorado. Current
work at the Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus Photovoltaic Testing Lab
(ASUE-PTL) is paralleling the NREL work, except that the test modules
are located in a hot desert climate at the ASU's Polytechnic campus Campus, Mesa,
Arizona. The progress of this work is reported to NREL through seven
progress report deliverables and one final report deliverable as
follows.
The first seven progress reports provide information on installation
of test modules and the quality of the acquired data for both PTL
and NREL sites. The eighth report, final report, provides information
on reduction and analysis of the acquired data for both PTL and
NREL sites.
In the first report, the PTL installation procedures of the test
samples and the operational features of the data acquisition system
were documented and reported in February 2000. In the second report,
the modifications made to the data acquisition system and initial
collected data were reported to NREL in August 2000. In the third
report, the adjustments made to the data acquisition system, and
the collected data for the period of August through December 2000
were presented to NREL. A faulty CR10WP control channel that hindered
the data collection was also reported in the third report. In the
fourth report, the collected data for the period of January through
March 2001 were reported for both PTL and NREL sites. In the fifth
report, the collected data for the period of April through July
2001 were reported for the PTL site. In the sixth report, the collected
data for the period of August through November 2001 were reported
for the PTL site. In the seventh report, the collected data for
the period of December 2001 through March 2002 were reported for
both PTL and NREL sites. In this final report, the data reduction
and analysis are reported for the data collected between February
2000 March 2002 at both NREL and PTL sites. Some conclusions are
obtained and the recommended equation with coefficients to predict
module temperature was obtained based on the collected real data
for over a period of two years.
