Design and proper sizing of solar energy schemes for electricity production in Malaysia

As solar energy is a part of widely recognized renewable energy sources; the solar energy source is free of cost and clean energy whereby environmental impacts are negligible. In tropical countries like Malaysia, solar energy potential has been utilized in wide range of applications of remote and urban areas and has been growing rapidly. There are also new research interests shown by the universities and R&D institutions to assess the solar energy application potential in Malaysia for proper utilization. But it has not fully utilized until recently. However the main problems limiting solar utilization are the use of costly equipment and the selection of wrong peak sunshine data that results wrong sizing of equipment for the solar energy projects. For instance, peak sunshine and insolation figures in daily, weekly and yearly basis of the same location are different from one data to another if accuracy of the solar energy data is compromised. This is because the data available is based on average with yearly basis, which has nothing to do with actual data available in a specific place and a specific date. It is therefore, very important to form proper design procedures and solar energy components sizing to do exact calculations for the solar power production before opting any actual implementation of solar energy scheme. Universal and local data will be compared to come up with the required peak sunshine figures in order to get the exact amount sunshine in a particular zone and in a particular day. The problems involved in right sizing and using the right data are the key success to solar energy applications, improve its performances and reduce unnecessary costs. For that reason, carrying out proper design & sizing procedures for practical solar energy schemes are necessary. In this work, proper design procedures and system sizing are the main focus. Moreover, proper design procedures are proposed and supporting facts and figures are presented.