Performance assessment of 186 kWp grid interactive solar photovoltaic plant in Northern India

The expanding demand of energy has aggravated the concern of exploring new and renewable resources to ensure the energy security for longer term. In this context, the grid interactive solar photovoltaic systems are gaining wide popularity at massive scale power generation. The performance assessment of 186 kWp installed capacity grid interactive ground-mounted solar photovoltaic power plant has been carried out, in view of obtaining better designing, operation/maintenance characteristics of the system. The solar photovoltaic plant is installed at Amity University Haryana, Gurugram, India, getting annual mean solar insolation and temperature of 550–700 Wm−2 and 28.4°C respectively. The analyses have been accomplished for a complete year of 2018 and the magnitudes of yearly mean performance ratio and capacity utilisation factor are reported to be 0.827 and 0.178 respectively. Further, the actual energy production is compared to the predicted one obtained with PVSyst and system advisor model and found to be in agreement with an approximate uncertainty of 1.34%. The net system losses due to various factors viz. temperature, irradiance, solar photovoltaic module quality, ohmic wire, inverter mismatch in arrays and maintenance losses are observed to be 27.7%. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.