Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-25-2021
Abstract
The IEA PVPS Task 13 group, experts who focus on photovoltaic performance, operation, and reliability from several leading R&D centers, universities, and industrial companies, is developing a framework for the calculation of performance loss rates of a large number of commercial and research photovoltaic (PV) power plants and their related weather data coming across various climatic zones. The general steps to calculate the performance loss rate are (i) input data cleaning and grading; (ii) data filtering; (iii) performance metric selection, corrections, and aggregation; and finally, (iv) application of a statistical modeling method to determine the performance loss rate value. In this study, several high-quality power and irradiance datasets have been shared, and the participants of the study were asked to calculate the performance loss rate of each individual system using their preferred methodologies. The data are used for benchmarking activities and to define capabilities and uncertainties of all the various methods. The combination of data filtering, metrics (performance ratio or power based), and statistical modeling methods are benchmarked in terms of (i) their deviation from the average value and (ii) their uncertainty, standard error, and confidence intervals. It was observed that careful data filtering is an essential foundation for reliable performance loss rate calculations. Furthermore, the selection of the calculation steps filter/metric/statistical method is highly dependent on one another, and the steps should not be assessed individually.
Keywords
degradation rate, performance loss rate, PV system degradation, PV system performance
Publication Title
Progress in Photovoltaics
Grant
GA. No. 721452-H2020-MSCA-ITN-2016; Award Number 34366
Funder
European Union's Horizon 2020; Solar Energy Technologies Office, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), U.S. Department of Energy
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Curran, Alan J.; Rath, Kunal; Khalilnejad, Arash; and French, Roger H., "International Collaboration Framework for the Calculation of Performance Loss Rates: Data Quality, Benchmarks, and Trends (Towards a Uniform Methodology)" (2021). Faculty Scholarship. 64.
https://commons.case.edu/facultyworks/64