Performance of a remote hybrid PV system based on real and modelled data in Indonesia

This paper is aimed at assessing the performance of a remote hybrid PV/diesel system located on the Island of Kri in Papua, Indonesia. For this purpose, monitoring data of electrical variables at 5 minutes recording intervals were used. Using the INSEL simulation environment, in-plane irradiance (Gi) was modeled from global horizontal irradiance (Gh) data from five weather stations at various distances from the hybrid PV system. Also, PV module temperature (Tm) was predicted from ambient temperature (Ta) and wind speed (v) according to the Sandia model for module temperature. The performance of the PV element of the hybrid system was compared with data from another PV system in Jayapura (also in Papua) which is grid-connected. We found that the performance ratio (PR) of the PV systems in Kri and Jayapura during the observation period were 41% and 90%, respectively. We also found that data from remote weather stations with a distance of up to 100 km from the reference PV system could be used to get the same PR values. However, with greater distance, the PR deviates non-linearly in the range of 20% to 50%, which is in line with previous findings indicating no correlation occurs. Our advice is, therefore, to apply local irradiance monitoring at PV sites instead of extrapolating irradiance over significant distances.