Intuitive Criteria for Site Selection and Performance Evaluation of PV Systems in Southern Taiwan

Abstract

The capacity factor (CF) is usually used to define the photovoltaic (PV) system performance and as the common criteria for site selection. The generation output of the PV array is dependent of the local climate and the geographical environment except the module efficiency. Here, instead of the CF, we propose the modified daily sun hours (DSH) as the performance index of the PV system in operation. We find the historic evolution of modified DSH not only reveal the system performance but also the PV array degrading status, so that we can find the system fault early and adopt the preventive maintenance.