Hardware/Software System to Energy Generation Losses Estimates in Photovoltaic Solar Plants

• Guilherme G. Souza UFMS
• Ricardo R. Santos UFMS
• Erlandson F. Saraiva UFMS

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/semish.2021.15825

Abstract

Soiling on the photovoltaic modules has a straight impact on the solar energy generation. One way to minimize such impact is to identify the power generation losses due to soiling and perform cleanup procedures. Towards this end, this work presents a hardware/software system comprised of an electronic platform for the acquisition of environmental variables and a non-linear mixed effect model (NLME) to estimate the power generation from the solar power plants. The system allows users to analyze the soiling impact on energy generation on photovoltaic solar plants. The model was evaluated using a real dataset comprised of measurements of generated power and environmental variables from October 2019 up to April 2020. The fitted model has presented a mean square error of 0.0044 and the results showed daily power losses below 1.1%.

Keywords: Soiling, Photovoltaic Solar Energy, Particulate Deposition, Soiling Station, Log-Logistic Predictor

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