Operation of a PV Power Plant during Overpower Events Caused by the Cloud Enhancement Phenomenon

Markku Järvelä and Seppo Valkealahti
Additional contact information
Markku Järvelä: Department of Electrical Engineering, Tampere University, P.O. Box 692, FI-33101 Tampere, Finland
Seppo Valkealahti: Department of Electrical Engineering, Tampere University, P.O. Box 692, FI-33101 Tampere, Finland

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-15

Abstract: Partly cloudy days possess two characteristics that can significantly increase the photovoltaic (PV) generator power: the operating temperature of the PV panels can cool down during the shade periods, and the irradiance can be enhanced due to the cloud enhancement phenomenon. If an overirradiance event is preceded by a long shade period, the maximum power of a PV generator can occasionally be much higher than the nominal nameplate power. During the overpower events, the inverter is operating in power-limiting mode whereby the operating voltage is increased to decrease the power of the PV generator. We created a simulation model of a 31.9 kW PV generator and used 12 months of irradiance and PV panel temperature measurement data to analyze its operation. We analyzed the PV generator power during the overirradiance events and applied various static power limits to calculate the operating voltage ranges in case of power curtailment. During the observation period, the maximum power produced by the PV generator was 1.42 times its nominal power. The duration of the overpower events was up to several minutes, but the typical duration was only some tens of seconds. The strongest overpower events occur seldom and their duration is only some seconds. Due to the overpower events, the operating voltage may receive high values, especially if the DC-to-AC power ratio is large.

Keywords: overirradiance; cloud enhancement; PV generator; operating voltage; PV cell temperature (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: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2185/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2185/ (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:13:y:2020:i:9:p:2185-:d:353047

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 ().