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Performance assessment of standalone PV systems for rural communities

ABSTRACT The application of the standalone PV power system is currently considered as an alternative source of electricity for remote areas. The energy authority and An-Najah National University in the Palestinian territories worked on electrification of many small communities and villages by using centralised and decentralised solar PV systems. In this paper, long-term performance assessment of two 4.8 kW standalone PV pilot systems at two different villages is depicted. The unused energy of the storage battery, which is equal to 50% of the PV array output, is found to be the key factor of having low-performance ratio in the range of 0.25–0.65. The simulation results using PVSYST software illustrate that adopting the two-axis solar tracking mode for standalone PV systems has a significant impact on its output. It can reduce the size of the PV array by up to 50%. It is proposed to connect groups of villages with a local micro grid which can be fed by the surplus energy from the different standalone systems. Cost analysis of the current and the proposed design shows that the payback period of the micro-grid with two-axis tracking PV array is less than half of the period of the current standalone system. Abbreviations: Eoutput : Monthly array energy output (kWh); Earray : Capacity of the PV array (kW); Eload : Monthly energy demand of the site (kWh); Eunused : Unused energy when the battery is full (kWh); Esurplus : Percenatge of surplus energy (%); Epv : PV panel capacity (kW/m2); ηpv : PV panel efficiency (%); Irr : Global irradiation on horizontal surface (kWh/m2).