Analysis of the VISTA photovoltaic facility-system performance

The performance of the Virginia Integrated Solar Test Arrays is reported and analyzed. The test period reported spans from January 1987 to December 1988. The performance of single-crystal and polycrystalline modules under diverse sky conditions over time while single-axis, two-axis tracking, or fixed tilt arrays are used is examined. Even though the photovoltaic modules performed as expected, the overall outage rates for the two years have ranged from 31.3% to 51.7% for the three subfields. Causes of these outages include PCU trips due to ground fault currents and failures of the insolation recorders, the data acquisition system, the trackers and the modules. The observations suggest that there has not been any significant deterioration of the module performance over this period.<
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