Modeling impacts of PM 2.5 concentration on PV power outputs

Abstract

PM2.5 concentration can have significant impacts on solar irradiation and thus on photovoltaic (PV) power output. This paper presents a method to model impacts of PM2.5 concentration on PV power. A non-parametric kernel density estimation is used to fit the probability distribution of PM2.5 concentration. An incremental relation between the increase of PM2.5 concentration and the decrease of solar irradiation is established for each PM2.5 level based on the PM2.5 air quality index. The simulation results using the PM2.5 and solar irradiation data in Beijing verified the effectiveness of the proposed method.