Performance evaluation of two grid-connected solar photovoltaic systems under temperate climatic conditions in South Korea

This study evaluates two grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) systems using five criteria: final energy output, system yield, performance ratio, capacity factor, and system efficiency. The PV systems were installed on the rooftop of the Engineering building, Kyungpook National University, the Republic of Korea. The system was monitored, and necessary environmental data was recorded from January 2021 to December 2021. From the result, the annual electricity exported to the grid by the m-si solar PV was 9521 kWh, and that of the p-si was 8263 kWh. The m-si has a better annual average daily final and array yield of 5.23 h/day and 5.45 h/day than the annual final and array yield of p-si with 4.93 h/day and 5.12 h/day, respectively The composite solar PV saved the environment from 9.7 tons of CO2per year, equivalent to 9.7% of people reducing energy use by 20%. Based on the analysis for this location, the m-si solar cell technology showed a better annual performance than the p-si solar cell when considering the five evaluations, except for the performance ratio where the p-si solar cell outperformed the m-si solar technology. Finally, this study provides insightful information to researchers, PV installers, and PV manufacturing companies on the actual performance of grid-connected solar PV in Korea. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study evaluates and compares two grid-connected solar photovoltaic systems using five different criteria. The results show that the m-si solar PV has a better annual performance in terms of energy output and array yield, and saves approximately 10 tons of CO2 emissions per year.