Dynamic analysis of performance of photovoltaic generators under moving cloud conditions

Dynamic analysis of performance of photovoltaic generators (PVG) under moving cloud conditions has been successfully carried out. The research work aims at eliminating under-performance contributed by the manufacturer’s specification. The PVG characteristics were simulated in Microsoft Excel environment under simple and superimposed conditions, designating mild and strong cloud conditions, respectively with modified and unmodified PVG parameters. Concurrently, field measurement of the performance characteristics of PVG was carried out at KIU (0.3476oN, 32.5825oE) upon which the facade in the specification was estimated and reduction in output power under the aforementioned conditions were computed. The power reduction becomes colossal during the superimposed condition. Besides, common operational problems like transients in output voltage and power are remarkable. Thus, the under-performance in large PVG could be narrowed by scaling down the manufacturer’s rating or applying the correction factor recommended by this work in large PVG design, hence, leaving the design engineers with the moving cloud problems.