Design of an off-grid 2 kW solar PV system

Saudi Arabia is in need for clean and renewable sources of energy such as solar for electricity and water heating, wind, geothermal, tidal and biomass. This paper involves the design of a 2-kW standalone solar Photovoltaic system at King Faisal University and presents a methodology for technical and economic analysis of the proposed system with energy storage facility. The PV system will be built on top of the College of Engineering and will be used for research and academic purposes. The design, simulation and analysis were carried out using PVsyst V6.12 software package that takes into account the geography of the site, surrounding trees, buildings as well as the solar energy resources and available solar technologies. It was found that shading due to nearby buildings and trees had limited effects on the system performance. However, the study revealed that even though solar energy resources were abundant in the summer, high ambient temperatures drastically hindered the overall system performance for the given system components and reduced the solar cell efficiency by up to 16%. Losses due to shading varied between 0.70% and 4.2% depending on the panel spacing and field location.