Procedures for determining the performance of stand-alone photovoltaic systems

Standard test procedures have been developed to assess the performance of stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) systems. This paper presents an overview of the procedures and results from the validation tests conducted at one European and three US test sites. To date, most PV system performance test procedures have looked at the performance of the individual components and have not addressed how the integrated system works as a whole. The performance test procedures described in this paper verify that the system and load operate as expected, ensure that the PV array and system are capable of recharging the battery, determine the usable battery capacity (UBC), and determine if there is any significant change in the UBC measured three different times during the tests.