Integration of temperature and dust effects in siting large PV power plant in hot arid area

Abstract

Recently, solar PV technologies witnessed a commercial vigor due to their tremendously decreasing prices. However, these technologies are vulnerable to dust and temperature which can significantly degrade their efficiency. Taking into account, the effect of dust and temperature during the site assessment for large PV power plant will reduce their vulnerability and optimize their operation efficiency. Most of the site assessment for large PV power plants does not take into consideration spatio-temporal variability of dust and temperature effects due to their measurement complexity. This paper presents an original approach of integration of the effects of temperature and dust in siting large PV power plant using Fuzzy logic and GIS-based spatial multi-criteria evaluation. Dynamical downscaling approach of the high resolution COSMO Numerical Weather Prediction model is used to simulate the annual pattern of temperature and the Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) derived from Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR) is used to retrieve the contamination degree of the air with mineral aerosol. Land suitability analysis for large PV farms implementation is carried out for the case study of Oman. Compared to previous results obtained without temperature and AOD, the new results show that several areas are declassified because of their exposure to high temperature and dust risks. It is noticed that the highly suitable land areas decreased significantly by 81% after considering the temperature and dust constraint layers. Different PV technologies are considered and it is found that the Concentrated Photovoltaics (CPV) technology provides higher potential for implementing large solar plants. In fact, if all highly suitable land is exploited for CPV farms, it can supply more than 750 times the current total power supply in Oman estimated at 16.1 TWh in 2010. 2013 Elsevier Ltd.