Overview of system setup

Tilt: 36°
The angle under which the modules are placed

Azimuth: 180°
The direction the modules face

landscape
The orientation of the modules

The location of the PV system

Overview of the used PV modules

Local temperature, irradiance and windspeed measurements

How much energy does the system produce during a year?

From the start of its operation in June 2014 until today, the virtual PV system has produced 68.35 GWh of green electricity. This energy could have alternatively been produced from conventional fossil fuels with a total emission of 27614 tonnes of CO₂ in the atmosphere [1]. This is equivalent to the amount of CO₂ emitted or captured by [1], [2], [3]:

2642
people for one year

12328
households for one year

3107235
gallons of
gasoline

64219
barrels of oil

13807
tonnes of coal

708051
tree seedlings growing for 10 years

The system performance under real-time weather data is compared with the performance predictions based on the climate data for the location. Differences between the weather conditions of this year and the average climate for the location affect the PV system performance, as shown in the figures below.

The performance ratio (PR) of the PV system is a measure for the amount of energy losses occurring in the PV system. A PR of 90% indicates that 10% of the maximum achievable energy production is lost in the PV system, for example due to the conversion efficiency of the inverter.

How much energy did the system produce so far today?

As the virtual PV system is a megawatt-scale PV system, it would be able to produce enough energy to power a large number of households, even in winter. Yesterday 131 households could have run completely on electricity from the PV system.

The PVP has characterized the climate for this virtual PV system location, and it is therefore possible to provide a prediction of the system's power output during any day of the year. In reality, fluctuations in sunlight and other weather conditions cause the real-time power output to differ from that expected power production given the climate of the location.

What is the annual energy yield of this system?

The annual energy yield (EY) is the ratio of annual energy production (in kWh) to installed capacity (in kW_p). A high EY can indicate that the year was particularly sunny, that the system performance in that year was high, or both. The virtual PV system simulation is active since June 2014, explaining the low EY for that year. In 2018, the implementation of a new PV system performance model in the PVP 2.0 increased the virtual PV system's performance with respect to 2015-2017. From 2020, the calculations include a mutual shading loss. However, this loss is small due to a large rowspace of 4.11m.

What are the losses of this system?

The model assumes 0% shading losses due to surrounding obstacles. However, the field-setup causes some mutual shading loss. Since the rowspace of this system is quite large, these mutual shading losses are minimal. It was calculated that on a yearly base, roughly 21MWh/year is lost due to mutual shading (DC energy). This is only 0.27% of the total yearly DC energy production.

The figure below shows which energy losses occur between the incidence of sunlight on the solar panels and the final electricity output of the PV system.