Soalr PV system size calculation?

[zohaib]

Hi,

I am working on solar projects. And i am a new in this area. I want to know about how we calculate our solar system PV size i.e solar panels or inverters we need based on our requirement.
Is there is any software in which we can insert our requirements and got PV system size. Or any calculation which can help in this area.
I have gone through NREL software but i didn't understand how to use it correctly. If anyone who has worked on this software then kindly help me in this regard.

Waiting for your useful suggestions.

Thanx

[J.P.M.]

Hi,

I am working on solar projects. And i am a new in this area. I want to know about how we calculate our solar system PV size i.e solar panels or inverters we need based on our requirement.
Is there is any software in which we can insert our requirements and got PV system size. Or any calculation which can help in this area.
I have gone through NREL software but i didn't understand how to use it correctly. If anyone who has worked on this software then kindly help me in this regard.

Waiting for your useful suggestions.

Thanx

The easiest of the NREL stuff is probably PVWatts. Spend 10-20 min. reading the help/info screens first. a lot of the rest of the NREL stuff may take a bit of background in sol. energy, but that's always a good idea to acquire when working on solar projects.

[zohaib]

NREL software

The easiest of the NREL stuff is probably PVWatts. Spend 10-20 min. reading the help/info screens first. a lot of the rest of the NREL stuff may take a bit of background in sol. energy, but that's always a good idea to acquire when working on solar projects.

Thanks for the response.
I gone through NREL PV watts software but i could not find a weather file of my country(Pakistan) in this. I have searched it on internet but could not find this.
Any idea about this?

Wait for your response.

[J.P.M.]

Thanks for the response.
I gone through NREL PV watts software but i could not find a weather file of my country(Pakistan) in this. I have searched it on internet but could not find this.
Any idea about this?

Wait for your response.

I too searched but so far, have come up empty. It appears there is not much solar rad. data avail. for your country. The geographically closest location for NREL hourly solar data is New Deli which isn't close. You can try it, but I'd caution that there is no way to know if that data is representative of your area or way off. There are various other archival ways to generate synthetic data but much too complicated to describe here. Seek out the journal "Solar Energy". There are probably several hundred papers on the subject. You might get lucky and find some dealing with Pakistani conditions.

Good luck.

[zohaib]

I too searched but so far, have come up empty. It appears there is not much solar rad. data avail. for your country. The geographically closest location for NREL hourly solar data is New Deli which isn't close. You can try it, but I'd caution that there is no way to know if that data is representative of your area or way off. There are various other archival ways to generate synthetic data but much too complicated to describe here. Seek out the journal "Solar Energy". There are probably several hundred papers on the subject. You might get lucky and find some dealing with Pakistani conditions.
Good luck.

Thanks for your kind response. I will try to find some related stuff.

Thanx again

[J.P.M.]

Thanks for your kind response. I will try to find some related stuff.

Thanx again

You're welcome.

Good luck.

[sensij]

An EPW file for Karachi can be found here. That format can be read by NREL's System Advisor Model (SAM), or reformatted into a TMY file if you prefer. PVWatts does not (to my knowledge) allow custom data sources, so you'll have to take the time to learn SAM if you'd like to use this. It is somewhat more complicated than PVWatts, but the learning curve is not insurmountable.

[J.P.M.]

An EPW file for Karachi can be found here. That format can be read by NREL's System Advisor Model (SAM), or reformatted into a TMY file if you prefer. PVWatts does not (to my knowledge) allow custom data sources, so you'll have to take the time to learn SAM if you'd like to use this. It is somewhat more complicated than PVWatts, but the learning curve is not insurmountable.

That looks like 15 years of hourly data and useful. If so - and not knocking it at all, but Id caution that's the type of data NREL uses to SELECT "typical" months for use in configuring a TMY. So, While certainly useful, I'd not call any particular data "average" or "representative" without knowing the limitations. I'd suggest to the OP a review of how a TMY month is selected and then, if real ambitious, create a TMY using the NREL selection method. Then, get a copy of SAM, learn how to use it, and plug in the self generated TMY. Sounds like a rock in the shorts, but possible.

Note to Sensij: Nice find.

[zohaib]

An EPW file for Karachi can be found here. That format can be read by NREL's System Advisor Model (SAM), or reformatted into a TMY file if you prefer. PVWatts does not (to my knowledge) allow custom data sources, so you'll have to take the time to learn SAM if you'd like to use this. It is somewhat more complicated than PVWatts, but the learning curve is not insurmountable.

thanx for your help