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Evaluation of optimum PV tilt angle with generated and predicted solar electric data using geospatial open source software in cloud environment

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Abstract

In this article, a novel approach to find out optimum tilt angle using generated and predicted solar data is presented. Here the generated electricity outputs data of the photovoltaics (PVs), installed on the building rooftops at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, India, have been obtained from the Institute for the past four years (2015–18). Simultaneously, the solar PV output data have been predicted using open source software application, geographic information system (GIS), Perl, global horizontal irradiance (GHI), remote sensing, and cloud computing. The satellite-derived GHI has been obtained from the database developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), United States, and local GHI using a pyranometer to validate the results. In the presented work, tilted GHI has been estimated using modified tilt angle algorithm implemented using Perl in a cloud environment. Further, the usable rooftop area has been digitized on high-resolution WorldView-3 image and calculated using QGIS. In this study, the validation of an optimum tilt angle has been performed by the comparison of the output from the installed solar plant to the predicted solar potential. The processing of optimum tilt angle obtained (19.86°) at IIT Roorkee has been performed using XenCenter server. This helped in processing the computation-intensive tilted GHI at various tilt angles. This approach also helped in providing further expansion plan. The R2 value between the predicted solar potential and actual generation for this study is 0.82.

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Acknowledgements

This study has been performed during a PhD program with a stipend from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India (GoI). We would like to thank Mr Pradeep K Dauhare, Assistant Executive, Engineer (Electrical), E&W, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India, for providing the solar plant data of Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee and necessary help. We would like to thank Dr Manohar Arora and Mr Naresh Kumar from the National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, India, for providing the meteorological dataset. The authors would like to thank honourable editor and reviewers for their constructive and innovative comments on the manuscript.

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KAPOOR, M., GARG, R.D. Evaluation of optimum PV tilt angle with generated and predicted solar electric data using geospatial open source software in cloud environment. Sādhanā 46, 108 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12046-021-01621-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12046-021-01621-4

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