Methodology for the sizing of a solar PV plant: A comparative case

This paper proposes a methodology for planning photovoltaic connected to the grid with and without tracker systems focusing on the sizing and the performance. The methodology it was developed via a set of simulations of two photovoltaic solar systems of 2 200 kWp. We select two test systems located in important sites for developing solar power plants in the world, one is in the city of Petrolina, state of Pernambuco, Brazil and the second is in the state of La Guajira, Colombia. The inverter and the photovoltaic modules were selected accordingly to their technical characteristics to form a comparable PV array. The analysis was performed using a NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) tool, called System Advisor Model (SAM). This software was used to analyze the performance of the PV plant, determining the optimal spacing settings between strings of modules and the number of modules in series and in parallel, verifying the energy costs for each configuration. The sun tracking system with 1 axis is also compared with the fixed modules. The solar resource data used in the simulations were obtained from Meteonorm software and from the National Solar Radiation Data Base (NSRDB) provided by the NREL, considering a typical meteorological year (TMY). The results shown that the number of panels per string are an important parameter for the planning phase of the solar plant.