Benefits of Supervising, Control and Energy Forecasting of a PV System in Terms of Independence from the Grid of a Factory

SCADA system implementation allow factories to use energy production by PV plants in the best way. This system is able to supervise and manage in real time the state of each device of the PV plant installed on Lufra factory. One page is created for each PV inverter (29 in total) when operator can access in real time the electric quantities and their parameters. An algorithm, which controls the active and reactive power of inverters (power plant control) is implemented in order the PV plant to have best performance. Furthermore, an alarm page is created when operators can see real time alarms of devices in the PV plant and then to fast repair or substitute the faulty component. Profitability in this case will be high. A model, which predicts hourly energy of PV plant for five days ahead is implemented for PV production forecasting. Weather condition parameters like ambient temperature, irradiation and wind speed, taken from an web page of weather forecast are the inputs of the model. In addition, the factory can intelligently plan their energy consumption over the coming hours using the information of PV production forecasting. So, they can increase the rate of self-consumption and even cut their energy bills through greater independence from the grid.