Experimental Application of Methods to Compute Solar Irradiance and Cell Temperature of Photovoltaic Modules
1
Photovoltaic Solar Energy Laboratory, Unisinos Unversity, São Leopoldo 93022-750, RS, Brazil
2
Centre Georges Peri, University of Corsica, 20000 Ajaccio, France
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sensors 2020, 20(9), 2490; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20092490
Received: 25 March 2020 / Revised: 25 April 2020 / Accepted: 26 April 2020 / Published: 28 April 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Solar Irradiance Sensors)
Solar irradiance and cell temperature are the most significant aspects when assessing the production of a photovoltaic system. To avoid the need of specific sensors for quantifying such parameters, recent literature presents methods to estimate them through electrical measurements, using the photovoltaic module itself as a sensor. This work presents an application of such methods to data recorded using a research platform at University of Corsica, in France. The methods and the platform are briefly presented and the results are shown and discussed in terms of normalized mean absolute errors (nMAE) and root mean square errors (nRMSE) for various irradiance and cell temperature levels. The nMAE (and nRMSE) for solar irradiance are respectively between 3.5% and 3.9% (4.2% and 4.7%). Such errors on computed irradiance are in the same order of magnitude as those found in the literature, with a simple implementation. For cell temperatures estimation, the nMAE and nRMSE were found to be in the range 3.4%–8.2% and 4.3%–10.7%. These results show that using such methods could provide an estimation for the values of irradiance and cell temperature, even if the modules are not new and are not regularly cleaned, but of course not partially shaded.
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Keywords:
estimation of solar irradiance; estimation of PV cell temperature; PV modeling; PV module as a sensor
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MDPI and ACS Style
Abe, C.F.; Dias, J.B.; Notton, G.; Faggianelli, G.A. Experimental Application of Methods to Compute Solar Irradiance and Cell Temperature of Photovoltaic Modules. Sensors 2020, 20, 2490. https://doi.org/10.3390/s20092490
AMA Style
Abe CF, Dias JB, Notton G, Faggianelli GA. Experimental Application of Methods to Compute Solar Irradiance and Cell Temperature of Photovoltaic Modules. Sensors. 2020; 20(9):2490. https://doi.org/10.3390/s20092490
Chicago/Turabian StyleAbe, Caio F., João B. Dias, Gilles Notton, and Ghjuvan A. Faggianelli 2020. "Experimental Application of Methods to Compute Solar Irradiance and Cell Temperature of Photovoltaic Modules" Sensors 20, no. 9: 2490. https://doi.org/10.3390/s20092490
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