The purpose of this study is to analyze the performance of the biggest PV system located in Oslo, Norway. The PV system has a capacity of 130 kW, it started operations in 2014 and it is located on the rooftop of a nursing house managed by the municipality. The analysis was done by making four different comparisons that lead to have a more detailed overview. The comparisons were from the energy production from different years, months and days; the performance ratio from different subsystems; the modeled energy output vs the actual energy output and lastly a relative degradation from different subsystems.
The thesis was conducted in Kjeller, Norway at the Institute for Energy Technology facilities. Data was collected from two different monitoring systems, the first was from an onsite weather station and the second was from the energy production monitoring system. After collecting all the data, the production comparison from different years, days and months was performed. A performance ratio analysis was done in order to know how well the PV system was performing. The software HelioScope was used to simulate a model of the PV system and the results of the simulation were compared to the real energy output. A degradation analysis without irradiance data proposed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory was implemented to compare the degradation rate between different subsystems.
The production analysis comparison within subsystems demonstrates that some identical subsystems produce more energy than others. For the performance ratio analysis, the results showed that the PV system has a good performance ratio despite of the shading some PV modules receive. The simulation of the model in HelioScope showed some discrepancies for the winter months while for summer months it was more accurate. Finally, the degradation analysis was not possible to demonstrate actual results, but the methodology was implemented.