Analysis of shading effects in Solar PV system

Abstract

Due to its advantages, use of clean energy in general and especially solar PV systems offer great solution of problems that people face in their everyday life. Generation of energy using solar PV system technology is cheaper and clean technology compared to the one of fossil fuels. Aside from its advantages, this technology still has some drawbacks that affect its performance where the ones caused by shadows is considered as one of the big problems. This thesis work shows laboratory experiments and simulations in order to see how the system is affected by shading where a 1.5 kWp PV system has been used for the study. The system has been simulated with PVsyst (7.0.6 version) and experimented in UR/ACE-ESD High E-Tech Smart Grid Laboratory. Laboratory experiments showed that whatever shade is applied to the system, the dc voltage and current change (increases or decrease) and dc power decreases. In simulation, it has been notified that the irradiances losses are dependent on time of a day, sun position and the rate of created shadow. From the simulated results, annual energy produced and near shading losses in non-shaded system is 2373 kWh and 0% respectively while in shaded system, the annual energy produced was 2055 kWh and 2.1% of near shading losses. This undoubtedly disturbs the performance of the power system as well as other related works