System Integration

PV panel reflction | The increasing deployment of PV systems in dense urban areas has drawn attention to the issue of glare and the public discomfort arising from the sun’s reflection on the PV panels. Licheng Liu, Yong Sheng Khoo and Thomas Reindl of the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS) and Julius Tan of Sunseap Energy discuss ways of fine-tuning system designs and alleviating visual discomfort, while not compromising on the energy yield of PV systems.

Covering a 1,295-hectare estate mostly of fallow farmland, the world’s largest solar plant sits in the Antelope Valley straddling two counties of California. The Solar Star project has been supplying its full 579MW of capacity to the grid since May this year and it will be announced as offi cially complete before the end of 2015. PV Tech Power explored the designs behind this mammoth installation near Rosamond, California, to investigate what key factors had to be considered when creating a solar plant that can supply electricity to more than a quarter of a million homes.

Performance | Potential-induced degradation (PID) has emerged as an issue of concern in the last decade because of the increase in the deployment of utility-scale high-voltage PV systems. Rubina Singh, Cordula Schmid and Jacqueline Ashmore of the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems CSE present an overview of the mechanisms for PID and the impact of degradation, as well as the factors that contribute to its occurrence. They also discuss techniques for the detection, mitigation and predictive testing of PID.

New inverter technologies offer installers the choice of central of distributed systems for PV arrays. Deciding which system is the most optimal to use isn’t always based on the size of a solar system, writes Alvaro Zanon.

A next-generation PV plant architecture based on increasing direct current system voltage from 1,000VDC to 1,500VDC holds the promise of a more cost-effective and productive utility-scale plant due to lower installation and maintenance costs. Mahesh Morjaria, Kevin Collins and Michael Stavish of First Solar and Greg Ball of DNV-KEMA Renewables explore some of the challenges associated with the development of the technology and the efforts to address some of those challenges.

PV modules are commonly installed with mechanical fixings. But as installers look to drive down system costs, structural bonding is emerging as a reliable and cost-effective alternative, writes Michael Niederfuehr.