Performance Analysis of a Grid-Connected Upgraded Metallurgical Grade Silicon Photovoltaic System

Chao Huang, Michael Edesess, Alain Bensoussan and Kwok L. Tsui
Additional contact information
Chao Huang: Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China
Michael Edesess: Centre for Systems Informatics Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China
Alain Bensoussan: Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China
Kwok L. Tsui: Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

Energies, 2016, vol. 9, issue 5, 1-15

Abstract: Because of their low cost, photovoltaic (PV) cells made from upgraded metallurgical grade silicon (UMG-Si) are a promising alternative to conventional solar grade silicon-based PV cells. This study investigates the outdoor performance of a 1.26 kW grid-connected UMG-Si PV system over five years, reporting the energy yields and performance ratio and estimating the long-term performance degradation rate. To make this investigation more meaningful, the performance of a mono-Si PV system installed at the same place and studied during the same period of time is presented for reference. Furthermore, this study systematizes and rationalizes the necessity of a data selection and filtering process to improve the accuracy of degradation rate estimation. The impact of plane-of-array irradiation threshold for data filtering on performance ratio and degradation rate is also studied. The UMG-Si PV system’s monthly performance ratio after data filtering ranged from 84% to 93% over the observation period. The annual degradation rate was 0.44% derived from time series of monthly performance ratio using the classical decomposition method. A comparison of performance ratio and degradation rate to conventional crystalline silicon-based PV systems suggests that performance of the UMG-Si PV system is comparable to that of conventional systems.

Keywords: photovoltaic; upgraded metallurgical grade silicon; data filtering; performance ratio; degradation rate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/5/342/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/5/342/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:9:y:2016:i:5:p:342-:d:69497

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().