Simulations for 20 years

[Abid Ali]

Hello Good Day!

 

I am working for an off-grid solar PV project in MALI. The project is about electrification of health centres, which may contain some critical health related equipment. Therefore, information about yields and PLOL for each year would be very useful.

 

I was trying to simulate our PV system using a licensed PVsyst to estimate the results for 20 years . I was trying to do it using Advance Simulation. However, simulation date available at this option are only for 1 year starting from 1990-01-01 to 1990-01-01. The Meteo File for this location shows Meteonorm (19986 - 2005), sat=100%, Synthetic. Therefore, I am able to simulate the results for 1 year. For the remaining years, I am calculating yields manually using MS Excel file by applying 0.5% degradation rate for PV madules.

 

I was just wondering if I am making any mistake here. Could someone guide me to use proper options in PVsyst in order to perform the simulations for 20 years.

[Abid Ali]

1 hour ago, Abid Ali said:

Hello Good Day!

 

I am working for an off-grid solar PV project in MALI. The project is about electrification of health centres, which may contain some critical health related equipment. Therefore, information about yields and PLOL for each year would be very useful.

 

I was trying to simulate our PV system using a licensed PVsyst to estimate the results for 20 years . I was trying to do it using Advance Simulation. However, simulation date available at this option are only for 1 year starting from 1990-01-01 to 1990-01-01. The Meteo File for this location shows Meteonorm (19986 - 2005), sat=100%, Synthetic. Therefore, I am able to simulate the results for 1 year. For the remaining years, I am calculating yields manually using MS Excel file by applying 0.5% degradation rate for PV madules.

 

I was just wondering if I am making any mistake here. Could someone guide me to use proper options in PVsyst in order to perform the simulations for 20 years.

Corrections:

1 year starting from 1990-01-01 to 1990-12-31.

Meteonorm (1986 - 2005)

[Michele Oliosi]

Hi,

You should consider using the "Aging tool" that you will find in the advanced simulation window.
This will take into account the yearly degradation, basically what you have done in excel. It also allows to access to the degradation loss window, which will give you more information on the aging loss.

Note that you can only simulate a single year with the meteonorm data you have, because what meteonorm provides (in PVsyst) is a statistics-based synthetic year, similar to a typical year, that is not a real year per se. This is indicated by the year 1990 in PVsyst.

You can simulate the aging through 20 years of simulations using the meteonorm data, but the same weather data will be used every year, which is not really realistic. Real years will be subject to year-to-year variations. Therefore you should maybe look into getting real time-series data for 20 years. One option (though it may have only 12 years or so) is:

Main window > Databases > Known format : choose "PVGISv5 hourly time series direct import" in the drop down menu. This will download a number of time-series files, which you can then use in the aging tool above.

NB: the aging tool is not available for stand-alone systems yet. In order to use it you should redesign your system as a grid connected one. However please first consider the stand-alone system to get advanced information on the battery sizing.
 

[Abid Ali]

On 4/26/2022 at 9:39 AM, Michele Oliosi said:

Hi,

You should consider using the "Aging tool" that you will find in the advanced simulation window.
This will take into account the yearly degradation, basically what you have done in excel. It also allows to access to the degradation loss window, which will give you more information on the aging loss.

Note that you can only simulate a single year with the meteonorm data you have, because what meteonorm provides (in PVsyst) is a statistics-based synthetic year, similar to a typical year, that is not a real year per se. This is indicated by the year 1990 in PVsyst.

You can simulate the aging through 20 years of simulations using the meteonorm data, but the same weather data will be used every year, which is not really realistic. Real years will be subject to year-to-year variations. Therefore you should maybe look into getting real time-series data for 20 years. One option (though it may have only 12 years or so) is:

Main window > Databases > Known format : choose "PVGISv5 hourly time series direct import" in the drop down menu. This will download a number of time-series files, which you can then use in the aging tool above.

NB: the aging tool is not available for stand-alone systems yet. In order to use it you should redesign your system as a grid connected one. However please first consider the stand-alone system to get advanced information on the battery sizing.
 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the detailed information, greatly appreciated

 

We have been following the same procedure through using the grid connected one. You reply and suggestion have validated our approach so that now we can work with more confidence onward.

 

Have a nice day!

[Moisiadis]

On 4/26/2022 at 4:39 PM, Michele Oliosi said:

Hi,

You should consider using the "Aging tool" that you will find in the advanced simulation window.
This will take into account the yearly degradation, basically what you have done in excel. It also allows to access to the degradation loss window, which will give you more information on the aging loss.

Note that you can only simulate a single year with the meteonorm data you have, because what meteonorm provides (in PVsyst) is a statistics-based synthetic year, similar to a typical year, that is not a real year per se. This is indicated by the year 1990 in PVsyst.

You can simulate the aging through 20 years of simulations using the meteonorm data, but the same weather data will be used every year, which is not really realistic. Real years will be subject to year-to-year variations. Therefore you should maybe look into getting real time-series data for 20 years. One option (though it may have only 12 years or so) is:

Main window > Databases > Known format : choose "PVGISv5 hourly time series direct import" in the drop down menu. This will download a number of time-series files, which you can then use in the aging tool above.

NB: the aging tool is not available for stand-alone systems yet. In order to use it you should redesign your system as a grid connected one. However please first consider the stand-alone system to get advanced information on the battery sizing.
 

hello,

I am also doing a 20 year simulation and as i was cheking again on my simulation it caught my eye that for the same year,  without any of the parameters changed, i got diffrend values as i reruned the simulation...this doesnt hapen to me for the first year, so i figure its something that happens when i enable the aging parameter.

I was working on trial and now i just have the demo version does that have something to do with it?

thank you in advance 

[Michele Oliosi]

Basically if you are using a PAN file not from the PVsyst database, sometimes the module parameters have not been assigned following our default procedure.

Whenever we apply aging, the module parameters have to be recomputed (this time we use adapt the parameters automatically), which may lead to some discrepancies.

It should be good practice to check all module parameters beforehand.
https://www.pvsyst.com/help/pvmodule_parameters.htm
https://www.pvsyst.com/help/pvmodule_rserie_rshunt_determ.htm

You especially want to look at the page:

[Michele Oliosi]

You can check this topic as well the issue is similar