PV Modeling Workshop Draws 220 Professionals
Approximately
220 solar energy experts from more than 30 countries and four continents
gathered in October at the headquarters of TÜV Rheinland in Cologne, Germany,
to discuss and share predicting performance and monitoring output from solar
photovoltaic (PV) systems. The two-day workshop was divided into six topical
sessions exploring advances in solar resource assessment, effects of irradiance
spectrum on PV performance, soiling losses, bifacial PV performance, modeling
tools, and monitoring applications. This workshop is the fourth and largest in
a series of workshops organized by the PV
Performance Modeling Collaborative (PVPMC), a collaborative group started
by Sandia National Laboratories in 2010 with the goal to advance the
“state-of-the-art” in PV performance prediction. The PVPMC collects information
from the community and shares it on the Web and in a set of open source code
libraries in Matlab and Python.
The
next workshop is planned for May 2016 in Santa Clara, California. Details will
be on the PVPMC website in
early 2016.
|
Prism PV System Installed at NM Regional Test Center
Sandia recently installed a bifacial solar photovoltaic
(PV) system at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) New Mexico (NM) Regional
Test Center (RTC). Bifacial PV technologies allow light to be harvested from
both sides of a PV module and can result in significant energy gains. The
system at the NM RTC is from Prism Solar and will be used for research to
compare module-level performance on Prism’s bifacial PV modules to standard
monofacial modules placed in the same orientation. Testing includes comparisons
of performance at different tilt angles and orientations, as well as over
highly reflective white ground surfaces. The purpose of this collaborative
project is to validate Prism Solar’s design guide in various climates and
sites. This guide quantifies bifacial energy gains as a function of array
design parameters, such as tilt angle, module height, and ground surface
albedo. Bifacial PV technologies may be especially suited for systems on white
commercial roofs and other reflective surfaces where back side irradiance is
higher.Similar test systems are planned for Vermont and Nevada RTCs.
The DOE established five RTCs in New Mexico, Colorado,
Florida, Nevada, and Vermont to independently validate new solar technologies in
a range of climates and settings. Funded by DOE’s SunShot Initiative, the RTCs
are part of a broad national effort to make solar energy cost-competitive with
other forms of electricity by 2020.
The SunShot Initiative also recently awarded funding for
further investigation of bifacial PV technologies. The project is led by Sandia
and also supports work at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the
University of Iowa in the areas of module characterization standards and
backside irradiance modeling using ray tracing methods. Through this project,
Sandia will install more bifacial PV arrays in NM in the coming months and
years.
|
Sandia Develops
Technology for High Performance Heat Pipe Solar Receiver
Sandia's concentrating solar power (CSP) team has demonstrated
a durable, high performance heat pipe wick for dish engine applications
operating at 800°C. Heat pipe receivers provide a thermal interface between the
concentrated sunlight on a focusing dish system and the heat engine that
converts the heat into electricity. Prior high performance heat pipes have had
limited durability due to materials limitations at temperature.
These systems require high peak fluxes as well as high total
power throughput. The heat pipe accomplishes high isothermal throughput through
the evaporation of sodium from a wick (or sponge) lining the heat absorber
surface. The vapor then condenses at the engine interface, much like a stovetop
double boiler. A new heat pipe wick with a blended stainless steel fiber felt
wick is under test, with 8000 hours of operation to date with no degradation in
performance. Prior felt wicks structurally failed in less than 700 hours. The
wick structure is periodically non-destructively evaluated with x-ray computed
tomography. The lamp-heated test will continue in a test cell at the National
Solar Thermal Test Facility at Sandia for at least 20,000 hours.
|
Sandia PV Researchers Featured in SolarPro
Magazine Article
Sandia researchers Jack Flicker and Jay
Johnson, along with SunPower’s Mark Albers, contributed to an article in the
November/December 2015 issue of Solar Pro
magazine. “Resolving Fire Hazards from the Ground-Fault Detection Blind
Spot” details how a current sense monitor, or CSM, can help prevent electrical
fires through ground-fault detection. Traditional fuse-based ground-fault
detector interrupters used in many central inverters are not capable of
detecting a fault that allows a ground path for the DC electrical current to
earth. This deficiency results in what is known as the ground-fault detection
“blind spot.” A CSM uses a current transformer to detect ground faults and can sound
an alarm when a fault is identified, thus reducing the chance of an electrical
fire.
PV Value® Tool Featured on Energy Sage
The PV Value® tool was
highlighted on EnergySage.com. PV
Value ® was developed by Sandia
and Energy Sense Finance, LLC, with funding provided by the U.S. Department of
Energy’s SunShot Initiative Small Business Innovative Research program. The
tool helps calculate the value of new or existing solar photovoltaic (PV)
systems on residential and commercial rooftops. The EnergySage article discusses
an example using PV Value® to estimate solar market values for homes in 15
cities across the United States. The authors found that solar photovoltaic
systems add value to residential homes – in some cases, more value than the
cost of the system new.
PV Value is now being developed and maintained by Energy Sense Finance, LLC.
STORY CORRECTION: Sandia
Co-Authors Paper Selected as "Best of the Best" at IEEE Conference
In the Sept/October Sandia Solar Programs newsletter, affiliations
were listed incorrectly for “Generic Wind Turbine Generator Models for WECC - A
Second Status Report,” which was selected at the 2015 IEEE Power and Energy
Society General Meeting as one of four “Best of the Best” papers. The correct
affiliations should be Juan Sanchez-Gasca (General Electric), Abraham Ellis (Sandia), Pouyan
Pourbeik (EPRI), Jay Senthil (Siemens), and James Weber (PowerWorld).
External Link Disclaimer: The appearance of hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement of the external Web site, the information, products or services contained therein.
|