The stand-alone application of photovoltaic (PV) systems, at current industrial production technological levels, could provide a viable solution to the problem of producing electricity for users located far away from power distribution systems. The author discusses the criteria for calculating the sizes of PV peak power and energy storage of a highly reliable power supply for special loads, with the aim of reaching the desired availability level. Adopting the criteria of loss of load probability (LOLP), the sizes of PV peak power and energy storage of the system are calculated in two steps. An initial provisional calculation is made, followed by a simulation of the most critical conditions, as a sequence of days with a minimum level of irradiation calculated probabilistically. A simple iterative process is adopted to evaluate performance.
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