Effect of PV Soiling on Day-ahead Scheduling of a Grid Integrated Microgrid

This Globally grid integrated Solar PV generation is getting a good momentum in depleting fossil fuel generation which is evident from GW level plant installations. Soiling in such SPV plants is established to be one of the predominant agents which reduce generation to a great extent. This will affect the short term and long-term operation scheduling of a power system. In this paper, a grid-integrated microgrid has been considered to assess the changes in the short-term day ahead operation scheduling of a microgrid considering the PV soiling. The actual field data are collected from the microgrid at Indian Institute of Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur to validate the propositions. It is observed that the daily soiling loss becomes 5% to 35% in this location. The operating cost is increased by ~12% alongwith changes in the operating pattern of the microgrid from zero soiling to actual soiled condition.