Application of Photovoltaic Systems

The interest in photovoltaic cells is increasing worldwide, due to the

improvements in materials and technology but primarily through
motivation by government incentives (Zahedi, 2005). The general purpose
of a photovoltaic system is to provide clean energy in the form of
electricity to different appliances or electrical loads (Solanki, 2011). It can
simply be mounted with no trouble on the roof of residential buildings in
addition to the walls of commercial buildings (Zahedi, 2005). A
photovoltaic system consists of solar cells which are assembled together
in series and parallels in order to achieve the desired current and voltage.
These arranged cells are called modules and the further arrangement of
these modules form arrays and arrays form panels, hence the term solar
panel. Apart from the solar cells, the system also consists of a number of
balance of system (BOS) components (Woyte et al., - ; ATPS, 2013; DGS
2008) which will be discussed further later.
The loads in the residential and commercial buildings can have different
currents such as direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC) and
highly depends on its function. The requirement of power will vary with
the time requirement of the appliance, be it during the day or at night or
for 24 hours. A photovoltaic system can only be effective during sunlight
without sunlight no electricity is produced so therefore, a means for the
energy produced during the day time is necessary. This form of storage is
usually a battery. There are other storage capacities apart from batteries
such as, flywheels, supercapacitors, hydrogen, compressed air and
pumped hydroelectric storage (Carrasco et al., 2006; Woyte et al., -;
Archer and Hill, 2001). Apart from batteries the load can be provided by
other means such as combining the PV cells to a generator or to a grid.
The application of photovoltaic systems can be divided into stand-alone
and grid connected photovoltaic systems (Zahedi, 2005; Woyte et al.,-;
DGS, 2008; Farhoodnea et al., 2013).
1. Stand-alone photovoltaic systems also known as off-grid, provide
electricity to either domestic households or non-domestic
households. This type of photovoltaic system is not connected to the
grid hence the name and could be as a result of remote houses and
villages that are not connected to the national electricity grid. In this
type of system a source of energy storage must be present in the
form of a battery, also another auxiliary power source maybe
connected in order to increase efficiency. Off-grid for domestic
purposes usually has a size of about 2kW in size (Zahedi, 2005). A
typical off-grid photovoltaic system comprises of the following
components (DGS, 2008; ATPS, 2013; Woyte et al., -):
i) Solar modules: These are required for the conversion of sunlight
to electricity

ii) Charge controllers: These are used to control the charging and
discharging of batteries in order to prolong their life span and
prevent any operational problems from occurring.
iii) Battery: This is used as a form of storage of the energy produced
as it is not used up immediately most times.
iv) Inverter: These are required to convert DC current produced by
the modules to AC current for required loads. It is achieved at a
certain voltage and frequency.
v) GRAPHIC

2) Grid-connected photovoltaic systems: Off-grid applications were

initially the target market for photovoltaic cells but the grid-connected
sector has become popular as it accounts for about 77% of the total
market around the world (Zahedi, 2005). In this type of system there is
no need for the storage as the electricity generated is fed directly into
the utility grid when the demand of the load is less than the electricity
generated. The size of these systems are between 1 and 100kW
(Zahedi, 2005). Due to the lack of storage requirement the price of this
system tends to be lower than that of off-grid which requires an energy
storage system. The limitations of this system are such that no storage
requirement so any energy not utilised will be fed back into the grid, in
the event of a black out the system shuts down to prevent dead
network but that also means no power is delivered to the house and
bills include charges of when the photovoltaic system does not work
(LJWSOLAR, 2011).

Integration with the Grid

Primarily this involves only the grid-connect photovoltaic system and not that of
an off-grid photovoltaic system. The grid-interconnection of photovoltaic systems
has an advantage in terms of utilisation of power but to ensure the safety of the
photovoltaic system and the reliability of the utility grid, technical requirements
must be satisfied in terms of utility power and photovoltaic system (Eltami and
Zhao, 2010).

A typical grid-connected photovoltaic system comprises of the following

components (DGS, 2008; ATPS, 2013):
i) Solar modules: These are required for the conversion of sunlight
to electricity
ii) Inverter: These are required to convert DC current produced by
the modules to AC current for required loads. It is achieved at a
certain voltage and frequency.
iii) Disconnect switch
iv) Utility grid
GRAPHIC

The inverters in this system are of utmost importance because the

inverters help to convert the DC current to AC current, which is the current
that is allowed through the grid. An inverter has 3 functions in order to be
able to transfer energy from the array to the utility grid (Calais et al.,
2002):
i) To shape the current into a sinusoidal waveform
ii) To invert the current into an AC current and
iii) If the photovoltaic array voltage is lower than that of the grid an
element has to be introduced in order to boost the voltage.
The way these functions will be ordered in the design of an inverter will
determine the type of semiconductor, inactive components and hence
loss, size and price of the inverter (Calais et al.,2002). Inverters can be
classified based on their arrangement such as (Carrasco et al., 2006):
i) Central Inverters: These inverters are basically inverters that are
connected in parallel and/or in series on the DC side. Most
inverters in the mid 1990s were self or line commutated central
inverters with DC power ratings above 1KW but disadvantages of
the central inverters were realised, such disadvantage included
complete loss of generation of electricity during inverter outages
( Calais et al., 2002)
ii) Module-oriented Inverters: These are connected in series on DC
side and parallel on the AC side.
iii) Module-integrated Inverters: These have one converter per PV
module and a parallel connection on the AC side. Module
inverters reduce losses more than string inverters and central
inverters
iv) String Inverters: These are more popular and consist of strings of
photovoltaic cells connected to one inverter
TABLE
According to So et al. (2006), four 3kW photovoltaic systems were set up
at the field demonstration test centre in Korea to investigate how
meteorological conditions affect the operation of the system, so as to
evaluate and analyse the photovoltaic system in terms of global
perspectives. The results showed that a monthly conversion of PV array
varied from 9.2% - 10.1% and that the DC output generated by the array
is directly proportional irradiance but conversion efficiency of photovoltaic
system does not depend on irradiance but on module surface
temperature. It could be seen that the photovoltaic system was strongly
affected by meteorological conditions such as shading and irradiance.
These need to be considered when photovoltaic systems are designed in
order to improve performance and efficiency.

Future/Potential Developments
Research efforts have made it possible to discover new and improved ways of
preparing organic/inorganic hybrid solar cells. In order to increase device
efficiency and performance there needs to be a high increase in the
understanding of fundamental principles involved in the operation of hybrid solar
cells.
Even though only a small portion of different combinations in terms of parameter
space has been realised, this has attracted a lot of attention due to its simple
processability and low cost and cost reduction is a key parameter to the future of
hybrid solar cells.
Although there has been a report of power efficiency exceeding 4% after a long
time of it being at 3%, there is still need for more research on optimisation of
different hybrid solar cells. As the addition of an inorganic acceptor material
should in theory improve the performance but hybrid cells are seen to have a low
efficiency in respect to their organic counterparts and inorganic solar cells.
Such developmental improvements of hybrid solar cells will aid in the realisation
of clean energy for the future.

References