Open AccessA method for predicting the solar photovoltaic (PV) potential in China
Author(s) -
Yun-Yu Chen,
Yi Peng,
Shuyu He,
Youmin Hou,
Hanshi Qin
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
iop conference series. earth and environmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.179
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1755-1307
pISSN - 1755-1315
DOI - 10.1088/1755-1315/585/1/012012
Subject(s) - photovoltaic system , solar resource , solar energy , environmental economics , work (physics) , environmental science , solar cell , computer science , meteorology , engineering , economics , electrical engineering , mechanical engineering , geography
A reliable assessment of energy efficiency for photovoltaic system is of importance for the solar energy policy planning and industrial development. Despite extensive advances over past years, almost all economic analyses overlooked the effect of local environment on the photoelectric conversion efficiency of solar cells, therefore leading to a non-negligible error in the prediction of photovoltaic potential. In this work, we developed a unified model to evaluate the regional economics of photovoltaic system by incorporating the heat transfer in solar cell and associated environmental influences. This model significantly improves the prediction accuracy of photovoltaic potential by establishing a correlation between the regional meteorological data and solar energy generation. In particular, with a meteorological data reduction, we dramatically decrease the computational complexity for predicting the photovoltaic potential. Through a theoretical analysis with the unified model, we demonstrate that the existing price mechanism of PV electricity in China cannot fully eliminate the economic disparities in various areas owing to the neglect of environmental effect. This work not only offers new insight into the research of solar resource and related policy making, but also provides guidelines for the further development of solar power industry.