Analyzing the effect of soiling on performance of solar PV modules
Student name: Ms Sahana L
Guide: Dr Jami Hossain
Year of completion: 2018
Host Organisation: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr Indradip Mitra
Abstract: Solar energy is considered as the key source of energy to provide energy access to all the citizens of this world. In this regard, the Government of India has set a target of 100 GW of installed capacity of solar energy by 2020 of which 60 GW is to be installed as large-scale solar power plants and 40 GW as rooftop solar power plants. The forecasting for renewable energy came into focus by the ‘Framework on Forecasting, Scheduling and Imbalance Handling for Variable Renewable Energy Sources (Wind and Solar)’ published by CERC in March 2015 (Commission, 2015). Many states have released their own regulations for forecasting based on the CERC framework or FOR regulations. The deviation charges that would be levied on the generators due to over or under injection of renewable energy into the grid, has indeed emphasized the need for accuracy in forecasting. The field of solar forecasting has gained steam in India and therefore the need arises to study the effect of soiling on performance of solar PV plants. During the initial stage of this project, a detailed research has been done on the topic “Effect of soiling on Performance of PV plants†and it has been documented in the Literature Review chapter. Case studies of soiling experiments in India and around the world have been studied in detail. In order to study the effect of weather related parameters on the performance of a solar power plant, analysis has been done for 20 kW solar power plant at NIWE. The data has been analysed for the months of January, February, March and April 2018. A cleaning schedule was planned and followed during the course of this project. It was observed that the average PV conversion efficiency of the plant was 12.1% and the average PR was 0.773.
The highlight of this project was the design and installation of a soiling experimental set-up to study the effect of soiling on performance of solar PV modules. The experimentation has successfully begun and it will be carried out for a minimum of one year in order to obtain a soiling loss factor for this site. This project is a part of the ongoing activities under the Green Energy Corridors Project of GIZ. The soiling factor will be used by the NIWE team in the solar forecasting model in order to improve the accuracy of the solar forecasting.
