Experimental Analysis of the Performance of a PV System with a Centralized Inverter and Microinverters: A Study Case in Manizales
Abstract
Generating electricity in an environment-friendly manner is a key factor for the economic and social growth of any country. Recently, the installation of PV generation systems has increased, although their performance depends on the location and is affected by multiple environmental parameters, such as solar radiation level, temperature, and precipitation. This work presents an experimental analysis, in terms of generated power, of a PV system installed in Manizales using (a) a centralized inverter and (b) microinverters. Manizales (2150 m a.s.l.; average temperature, 16.4 °C; and annual precipitation, 1878 mm) has historically presented two rainy seasons with high levels of cloudiness in April–June and October–December, and two seasons with minimum rains in January–March and July–September. For this experiment, a PV generation system was implemented using six Hybrytec solar panels ranging up to 270 Watts per panel and two monitoring systems: (i) Wifi–Box® for the PV array with a centralized inverter and (ii) EnvoyTM for the PV array with microinverters. The authors employed environmental parameters collected at the meteorological station La Nubia, located in the surroundings of the solar power system, and data gathered by the PV monitoring systems between July 2018 and May 2019. Despite the high levels of monthly accumulated precipitation (between 71 mm and 262.2 mm) and cloudiness (cloudy and mostly cloudy 76 % of the time) in the area, the PV array generated 16.5 % more energy with the microinverters than with the centralized inverter.
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