Performance Indicators For Grid-Connected PV Systems: A Case Study In Casablanca, Morocco

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to compare a one year performance of 5.94 KWp grid-connected PV module technology systems, constituted by three types of photovoltaic solar panels (Monocrystalline (mc-Si) (2.04KWp), polycrystalline (pc-Si) (2.04KWp) and amorphous (a-Si) (1.86 KWp))-silicon installed on the roof of the faculty of science Ben M'sik Casablanca. The study is based on the data collected along 2 years (2015)(2016) about energy production. The elements of performance evaluated monthly and annually include: energy output, system efficiency, reference yield, final yield, performance ratio, annual capacity factor and CO2 emissions avoided. The investigation of the annual: productivity (EAC,Y), system efficiency ( , ), performance ratio (PR), capacity factor (CF) and amount of CO2 emissions avoided for a-Si are found as 2941.15KWh, 7.21%, 73.1%, 18.05% and 1.765tons respectively. EAC,Y, , , PR, CF and amount of CO2 emissions avoided for pc-Si are found as 3331.15KWh, 11.4%, 75.6%, 18.64% and 1.999tons respectively. Mc-Si installation exhibits slightly higher values of EAC,Y, , , PR, CF and amount of CO2 emissions avoided which are 3370.89KWh, 11.7%, 76.7%, 18.86% and 2.023tons respectively. The results show that mc-Si system presents the best performance followed by pc-Si and by a-Si. In addition, a developed study was carried out to establish the relation between the efficiency and temperature, performance ratios and radiation, in order to know the behavior of each technology for each period of the year and for the whole year. Without forgetting a comparison of all results found with the previous studies in different locations.