Abstract

The scope of this thesis was the continuous study and monitoring of the behavior of a polycrystalline photovoltaic module in real life conditions, for an entire year. The module that was chosen for this purpose was a polycrystalline module of nominal power 220W, which was installed on the roof of the old facilities of the electrical engineering and computer engineering school of NTUA. The electrical characteristics of the module along with the meteorological data of the region were recorded continuously for a whole year and stored in a computer database. Afterwards, the data was analyzed graphically.

Furthermore a simulation of a photovoltaic cell was developed in the Matlab Simulink environment in order to compare the results of the experiment with the respective results of the simulation. The simulation that was built, accepts as input data the technical specifications of industrial photovoltaic modules (supplied by their manufacturers) as well as the operating voltage of the module, providing the user with the I-V and P-V characteristics of the modules as output data. Moreover, in case that the values of the cell resistances Rs and Rsh are unknown, they can be evaluated with parallel graphic representation of the procedure.

Finally, a polycrystalline photovoltaic module was fabricated with specifications as close as possible to that of the commercial 220W used in previous tests. The handmade module was also installed on the roof of the old facilities of the electrical engineering and computer engineering school. For this experiment, 60 polycrystalline photovoltaic cells from from the same manufacturer were chosen, which were soldered in series and encapsulated in a double glass formation in order to produce the required power of 220W.

Keywords: solar irradiation, photovoltaic cell, polycrystalline, module degradation, outdoor measurements, simulation

Author: Emmanouil Choustoulakis

Responsible PhD: Kostas Latoufis / latoufis@power.ece.ntua.gr

Supervising Professor: Nikos Hatziargyriou / nh@power.ece.ntua.gr

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