Experimentally Investigating the Power Production of Three PV Technologies Under Four Roof Conditions Typical for a Tropical Climate

摘要

This paper presents the preliminary results of the experiments to quantify the effects of four roof conditions on the power production of three photovoltaic (PV) technologies. Amorphous silicon, polycrystalline silicon and copper indium selenide PV technologies were set up on small scale bare, white coated, black water-proofed and grass-covered concrete roofs. Two MOSFET-based current-voltage curve tracers were implemented to acquire the maximum powers of the PV modules through LabVIEW software and myDAQ hardware from National Instruments. Under the prevailing irradiance and temperature conditions during the measurements, it was found that relative to bare concrete roof, white-coated roof reduced the modules' output powers by 2.6-58.8%, the black waterproofed-roof reduced the output powers by 20.8-50.7%, while the grass-covered roof increased the output powers by 15.1-81.4%. The results conclude that roofs conditions should not be neglected when PV systems are being considered.