A New Approach in Numerical Simulation of PV Systems for PV Boats

Conventional PV simulation methods are not sufficient to simulate and calculate energy balances for moving objects, such as PV-powered boats or PV-powered racing cars. We are developing a tool which can be used in 3D modeling software Rhinoceros. We want Frisian shipdesigners to help predict PV boat performance in an early stage of the design process. Our tool is based on conventional methods to determine solar positions with relation to an arbitrary oriented PV module. But added to the conventional methods, we integrated the availability of simulating PV energy yields on PV boats for pre-determined trajectories. Furthermore we can determine optimal PV orientation on PV boats for arbitrary times and places. Our tool is in a development stage and momentarily we are able to simulate clear sky situations. In order to prove the functionality of our tool, we’ve simulated 2 cases with 2 scenarios. The first case is a boat on a summer’s day and the second case a boat on a winter’s day in the Frisian Province region. With our tool we show that varying PV orientation on the boat, the energy yield can be increased. We also show that for pre-determined trajectories in summer, horizontal PV module orientation is not always the best choice to achieve the highest energy yields. The accuracy of our model is not yet determined.