A Comparative Performance of PV Power Simulation Software with an Installed PV Plant

Photovoltaic (PV) energy stands out due to the sustainability aspect, being the target of research investments. At University of Campinas, the sustainable campus project carried out the installation of PV plants at the university with the challenge of conducting research in the Campinas-Brazil region. In this way, the present paper simulated the largest PV plant of University of Campinas (336.96 kWp) in different PV power simulation software, aiming to have data for future comparisons with the installed PV system. For this, is it used PVsyst, PV*SOL, and HOMER for simulations, and then compared the result with the months containing the results of power generation for the installed PV plant. As a result, the three software performed well, with generation close to the installed PV plant. It was noticed HOMER optimism, PV*SOL conservatism and a more accurate result for PVsyst. Therefore, the PV plant worked as designed and the peculiarities of the three software were presented as a contribution of the paper.