solar power

MR. P.ASLAM BASHA

ASSISTANT ENGINEERING MANAGER; POWER TRANSMISSION &
DISTRIBUTION IC, SOLAR BUSINESS UNIT; LARSEN & TOUBRO LIMITED

Performance Analysis of Horizontal

SingleAxis Tracker vs. Fixed Tilt Solar
PV Plants in Southern States of India
Government of India (GOI) has taken several steps to promote Renewable Energy such as Solar,
Wind, Biomass, Biogas, etc. With regards to this, GOI initiated Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar
Mission to boost Solar Energy to meet the part of the increasing generation demand besides
addressing issues of climate change. Present, cumulative installed capacity has reached around
5.25 GW out of which nearly 30% was installed from Apr’15 to Jan’16. This indicates the
paramount importance and growth of Solar Power systems in India. The Solar Industry is going
to develop even further to meet the 100 GW target by 2022.

G
TABLE 1. LOCATION COORDINATES
enerally, solar panels are installed
States Location Latitude Longitude facing south with the optimum
Bellary 15.14°N 76.92°E tilt angle equal to latitude in
Karnataka ( KA) the northern hemisphere by convention
Chitradurga 14.22°N 76.40°E
to achieve the optimum power over the
Tiruchuli 9.57°N 78.31°E course of a year. But, this type of solar PV
Tamil Nadu (TN)
Parmakudi 9.50°N 78.60°E systems receives solar radiation at fixed tilt
with only one orientation of azimuth. To
NP Kunta 14.05°N 78.40°E
Andhra Pradesh (AP)
have a maximum generation, the PV ar-
Gani 15.60°N 78.31°E ray needs to capture as much irradiance as
Mahabubnagar 16.14°N 78.40°E
possible during sunshine time. To capture
Telangana (TS) the maximum amount of irradiance, the
Sangareddy 17.63°N 78.10°E
array needs to be focused towards the sun
Inputs for simulation are tabulated below. position, thus maximizing effective area
and receiving direct beam radiation. The
TABLE 2. MODULE CHARACTERISTICS ability to point towards the sun for a ma-
Module Technology Poly crystalline jority of the day can be accomplished by
varying the angles through deploying sev-
Peak Power(Wp) 310
eral different mounting structure methods
Module efficiency (%) 15.99 such as seasonal tilt, single-axis and dual-
Fill Factor 0.77 axis tracking systems.
For detailed analysis, 1 MWp Solar power
Thermal Coefficient of power(%/oC ) -0.43
plant with polycrystalline technology in 8

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 solar power

TABLE 3. CENTRAL INVERTER CHARACTERISTICS

To capture the Inverter Type Central

maximum amount Rated output power (kW) 1000

of irradiance, the MPPT voltage range (V) 570-850

array needs to be Euro Efficiency (%) 98.6

focused towards the Input DC Voltage (V) 1000

sun position, thus Output AC Voltage (V) 380

maximizing effective
area and receiving
direct beam radiation
test locations from states such as Karnataka
(Bellary and Chitradurga), Tamil Nadu (Tiru-
chuli and Parmakudi), Andhra Pradesh (NP
Kunta and Gani Solar Park) and Telangana
(Mahabubnagar and Sangareddy) was tak-
en into consideration. The states are chosen
because large capacity Solar Parks is being
planned at these places in near future. The
meteorological data has been taken from
Meteonorm-7.0. Using PVSYST 6.38, simu-
lation was performed and generated the
performance report of Horizontal single
Axis Tracker (HSAT) and Fixed Tilt (FT) solar
PV power plants for all the considered loca-
tions. This study investigates performance
of HSAT w.r.t Fixed Tilt solar PV power
plants in Southern States of India.
Project Details
The proposed location coordinates are
given in Table1.
West Sun at East
Noon
Fig1. Axis of rotation of Fig2.Orientation of HSAT
HSAT. Tracker during the day.
These locations experience an annual
average ambient temperature of around
28˚C. The range of yearly average global
horizontal radiation incident on the pro-
posed sites is 5.4-5.7 kWh/m2/day.
Horizontal Single-Axis Tracker
(HSAT)
Horizontal single axis trackers account for
the most installed capacity globally as far
as solar tracker is concerned. HSAT is the
most common type of single axis tracker
design. A horizontal single axis tracker
rotates from east to west on a fixed axis
which is parallel to the ground. The track-
er is navigated by a small motor/actuator
connected to the long central drive arm
which rotates east to west between rows
of panel mounted on torque tubes.
There are other mechanisms available
but principal objective remains the same,
to orient panels from east to west through
the day as the sun moves.
Analysis of HSAT Vs Fixed Tilt
The generation for all considered loca-
tions are obtained from the simulation and
compared graphically.
From the above graph, it is evident that
HSAT solar power plant would performs
better than fixed tilt plant for all the lo-
cations throughout the year for the same
installed capacity and for identical mete-
orological & operating conditions.
A tabular representation shows the %
generation gain of HSAT w.r.t fixed tilt
for all the locations. The table 4 illustrates
monthly as well as yearly average % gain
of HSAT plant as compared to fixed tilt
plant.

Fig 3. Comparison of Generation between HSAT &Fixed Tilt for different locations.

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solar power

TABLE 4 % GENERATION GAIN OF HSAT W.R.T FIXED TILT

HSAT tracker plant

produces more energy
yield when compared
to fixed tilt plant
throughout the year.
Annually, on an average
HSAT plant would
generate minimum 17 %
more than that of fixed
tilt plant

From the Table 4, it is observed that there
are months which shall have % gain more
than 30%.The maximum % gain is ob-
served in the month of May for all loca-
tions. Also average value for whole year
falls within a range of 16-19%. Hence it
is clearly evident that HSAT assures high
generation gain in the listed states of India
w.r.t fixed tilt solar power plant. Therefore,
it can help to maximize the returns fast.
The graphical comparison of Perfor-
mance ratio (PR) for all the considered lo-
cations are given below,
Performance ratio is calculated consid-
ering operating conditions such as plant
availability, grid availability, module deg-
radation, shading loss, soiling loss, DC &
AC cable loss, inverter & Transformer ef-
ficiency, etc.
It can be seen from Fig4 that PR of fixed
tilt plant is greater than that of HSAT track-
er plant. This is due to lesser temperature
loss, DC cable loss, auxiliary consumption&
plant availability (i.e., superior in perfor-
mance) than HSAT as shown in Table5. On
an annual average, PR for fixed tilt w.r.t
HSAT is high by 0.5-1.5% whereas the
range of % generation gain of HSAT in
comparison to fixed tilt is 16-19% due to
much higher radiation on tilt plane.

Conclusion
From the above analysis for 8 locations
in southern states of India, it can be con-
cluded that
• HSAT tracker plant produces more en-
Fig 4. Comparison of PR between HSAT & Fixed Tilt ergy yield when compared to fixed tilt
plant throughout the year. Annually,
TABLE5. PERFORMANCE DIFFERENTIATORS OF HSAT W.R.T FT on an average HSAT plant would gen-
Performance Differentiators : HSAT Vs FT
erate minimum 17 % more than that
of fixed tilt plant
Parameter HSAT FT
• HSAT Tracker performs more than
IAM Factor Loss     10% w.r.t fixed tilt for minimum of 9
months over the course of a year
Temperature Loss    
• The Maximum % generation gain can
Irradiance Level Loss     be expected in the month of May
DC Cable Loss     • Annually, the performance ratio of
fixed tilt plant is greater than that of
Auxiliary Consumption    
HSAT whereas % generation gain of
Soiling Loss     HSAT w.r.t fixed tilt is 17%(on an av-
Plant Availability    
erage ) since tracking system increases
the amount of radiation utilized by the
Superior Relatively Inferior system 

6 energetica india · MAR | APR16