Approximating Shading Ratio Using the Total-Sky Imaging System: An Application for Photovoltaic Systems

Mahmoud Dhimish () and Pavlos I. Lazaridis
Additional contact information
Mahmoud Dhimish: Laboratory of Photovoltaics, School of Physics, Engineering and Technology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK
Pavlos I. Lazaridis: Department of Engineering and Technology, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 21, 1-16

Abstract: In recent years, a determined shading ratio of photovoltaic (PV) systems has been broadly reviewed and explained. Observing the shading ratio of PV systems allows us to navigate for PV faults and helps to recognize possible degradation mechanisms. Therefore, this work introduces a novel approximation shading ratio technique using an all-sky imaging system. The proposed solution has the following structure: (i) we determined four all-sky imagers for a region of 25 km 2 , (ii) computed the cloud images using our new proposed model, called color-adjusted (CA), (iii) computed the shading ratio, and (iv) estimated the global horizontal irradiance (GHI) and consequently, obtained the predicted output power of the PV system. The estimation of the GHI was empirically compared with captured data from two different weather stations; we found that the average accuracy of the proposed technique was within a maximum ±12.7% error rate. In addition, the PV output power approximation accuracy was as high as 97.5% when the shading was zero and reduced to the lowest value of 83% when overcasting conditions affected the examined PV system.

Keywords: shading ratio estimation; photovoltaics; total-sky imaging; cloud estimation (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: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/21/8201/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/21/8201/ (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:15:y:2022:i:21:p:8201-:d:962108

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 ().