Preliminary Investigations on the Effect ofHumidity on the Reception of Visible SolarRadiation and the Effect of Humidity and WindSpeed on PV Module Output

摘要

In order to improve the accuracy of methods currently used for characterizing the performance of photovoltaic (PV) arrays in their actual use environment, it is of importance to investigate the effect of ambient variables on the PV module output. Malaysia is a hot and humid country with relative humidity (RH) of 100 % during rainfall and wind speed of greater than 4.0 ms occurred about 8.4 % in five years time. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to do a preliminary investigation on the effects of RH on the reception of solar radiation and the effect of humidity and wind speed on the PV module output. Outdoor field testing was conducted at Photovoltaic Monitoring Centre (PVMC), Universiti Teknologi MARA, of a BPSX-30U polycrystalline under variation of RH and wind speed separately. From the field testing, it was found that humidity reduced the amount of visible solar radiation reception, while humidity and wind speed both acts as cooling agents that increase the output of a PV module by reducing the module temperature.