Significant decrease of photovoltaic power production by aerosols. The case of Santiago de Chile

Mirko Del Hoyo, Roberto Rondanelli and Rodrigo Escobar

Renewable Energy, 2020, vol. 148, issue C, 1137-1149

Abstract: Santiago de Chile frequently suffers from atmospheric pollution that contributes to the decrease of solar irradiance on the surface, leading to losses in the energy output of photovoltaic systems. In this study, a simple model is used to estimate the effect of aerosols on the solar irradiance over the city throughout the year, using as input AERONET sunphotometer data and other in-situ measurements. The results show reductions of 3.5% and 14.1% for global horizontal and direct normal irradiance respectively and an increase of 35.4% for diffuse horizontal irradiance between the actual condition in Santiago and a hypothetical atmosphere free of aerosols. These effects translate approximately to an annual difference in the energy output of −7.2% and −8.7% for monocrystalline and amorphous silicon PV technologies respectively, and an annual difference of −16.4% for a CPV technology, showing that aerosols can have a significant effect on the photovoltaic energy production.

Keywords: Solar irradiance; Aerosols; Photovoltaics; AERONET; Air pollution; Santiago; Chile (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014811931496X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:148:y:2020:i:c:p:1137-1149

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2019.10.005

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().