Search results for "Photovoltaic systems"
showing 10 items of 15 documents
Effects of the Italian financial crisis on the photovoltaic dissemination in a southern city
2013
Abstract The aim of this paper is to estimate how the profitability of grid-connected PV (photovoltaic) systems may vary month by month due to the changes in all parameters involved in the economic evaluation (discount rate, PV electricity selling price, inflation rate, price of PV devices etc.). The effects of these variations were investigated for a district of a city in the South Italy (Palermo). The results of the analysis provided the trend of the actual coverage of the district power demand from June 2010 to August 2012. In particular the load match index, which considers the daily energy demand covered by PV systems, ranged from almost 30% to less than 12%, which is less than the val…
Energy Management of a Hybrid Photovoltaic-Wind System with Battery Storage: A Case Report
2019
This work presents a case report related to the management and the monitoring of a hybrid photovoltaic-wind system with battery energy storage, installed at the administrative offices building of the municipality of Valderice (Italy) within the framework of the Italy-Tunisia ENPI cooperation project Le Développement Durable Dans la Production Energétique Dans le Territoire (DE.DU.ENER.T.). The paper describes the hybrid system and briefly reports the monitoring data for a whole year, comparing the real production with the expected one and evaluating some performance indexes of the system. The performance indexes are very simple and have been defined only with the purpose of sh…
Analytical Investigation and Control System Set-up of Medium Scale PV Plants for Power Flow Management
2012
In the field of photovoltaic (PV) plants and energy conversion from renewable sources, a large part of the technical literature is more devoted to practical aspects (new solar cells, electrically driven PV panels, safety, reduction of parasitic currents, etc.) than to theoretical investigations. Despite this tendency, this paper presents a mathematical analysis of a medium scale photovoltaic power generation system connected to the distribution network and of its control system. In such a system, the conversion stage is unique due to the absence of a boost chopper. The conducted analysis leads to the interesting conclusion that the inverter used in the plant presents two degrees of freedom,…
Experimental characterization of series arc faults in AC and DC electrical circuits
2014
This paper presents an experimental characterization of the arc fault phenomenon, for both AC and DC systems, focusing the attention on series arcs. The aim of the study is to find some current characteristics, which can be significant for the purpose of arc detection. The arcing current signal is analyzed in both time and frequency domain. For the AC analysis, the test conditions are chosen in accordance with the “unwanted tripping tests” and the “operation inhibition tests” reported in the Standard UL 1699. The DC study is carried out on the currents waveforms acquired during some on-field tests on a PV plant. Starting from the study herein presented, the authors have found that is it pos…
Comprehensive Analytical Investigation for PV Plants and Their Control System with Reduced Power Electronics Equipments
2012
This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of a power generation system from PV source and it control system with a reduced power equipments connected with a power AC grid. The absence of the boost chopper as an actuator for Maximum Power Point Tracking concurs to make the system more reliable, affordable and moreover cheaper respect to a traditional one in which the boost chopper is used. The mathematical analysis exposed in the paper shows as a three phase inverter has two degrees of freedom allowing the simultaneous MPPT control and the synchronization with the power grid. The analysis also shows the way to determine the duty cycle of the inverter to deliver active power, and eventuall…
A Novel Computational Approach for Harmonic Mitigation in PV Systems with Single-Phase Five-Level CHBMI
2018
In this paper, a novel approach to low order harmonic mitigation in fundamental switching frequency modulation is proposed for high power photovoltaic (PV) applications, without trying to solve the cumbersome non-linear transcendental equations. The proposed method allows for mitigation of the first-five harmonics (third, fifth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh harmonics), to reduce the complexity of the required procedure and to allocate few computational resource in the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based control board. Therefore, the voltage waveform taken into account is different respect traditional voltage waveform. The same concept, known as “voltage cancelation”, used for single-…
Urban Energy Hubs Economic Optimization and Environmental Comparison in Italy and Vietnam
2018
This paper aims to perform the minimization of the yearly energy supply cost from the main electricity and natural gas grids related to an energy district, considering the installation of different equipments. The case study refers to energy consumption of a medium density urban district and involves the exploitation of different energy sources and devices (photovoltaic systems, electrical energy storage, heat pumps and cogenerators). The analysis of the district energy supply is accomplished through an energy hub model. After a cost analysis related to the considered energy systems, a MILP algorithm was used for the optimization of a cost function and the simulation of various scenarios. M…
ARC FAULT DETECTION EQUIPMENT AND METHOD USING LOW FREQUENCY HARMONIC CURRENT ANALYSIS
2012
An arc fault detection circuit includes a current sensing circuit coupled to a line conductor carrying a current. The current sensing circuit operates to sense current and output data indicative of the sensed current. A processing circuit implements a frequency transform algorithm to transform the output data to frequency data in a low frequency range and with a high spectral resolution where a minimum short time observation window is concerned. The processing circuit identifies an arc fault condition on the line conductor by identifying differences in said frequency data between at least two subsequent observation windows and identifying characteristics which exceed thresholds.
Theoretical and Experimental Comparison of Total Harmonic Distortion Factors for the Evaluation of Harmonic and Interharmonic Pollution of Grid-Conne…
2006
Grid connected photovoltaic systems are increasingly used in electrical distribution systems. However, they inject distorted currents. Therefore special attention must be paid to harmonic and interharmonic measurements. The new edition of IEC 61000-4-7 introduces the concept of harmonic and interharmonic groups, which implies new expressions for Total Harmonic Distortion factors. In the paper a theoretical and experimental comparison is made between the different total harmonic distortion factors in order to show which of the currently defined distortion factors is best-suited to detect harmonic and interharmonic pollution. Experimental tests were carried out first by means of a calibrator …
Assessment of Energy and Economic Effectiveness of Photovoltaic Systems Operating in a Dense Urban Context
2013
A methodology that permits testing the level of integration of the photovoltaic technology in urban areas is presented. The percentage of coverage of the electricity demand of grid-connected photovoltaic systems installed on the roofs of buildings were investigated in a district of the city of Palermo (Sicily). After classifying roofs according to their shape, orientation and pitch by means of satellite images provided by Google Earth, the ratio of the productivity of the PV systems and the consumption of electricity of the households was analysed. The results of the energy assessment have been screened considering the economic feasibility of grid-connected photovoltaic systems: the energy …