A comparative study on performance of a grid connected solar PV system installed in the urban, rural and coastal region of India

This paper investigates the performance of a 10KWp grid-connected solar PV power plant installed in three different regions of the country. Lucknow, Bareilly and Udupi are chosen as an urban, rural and a coastal region where annual average global insolation is >5.25 KWh/m
²
/day. Global insolation on the inclined plane per square metre per year in the urban, rural and coastal is 1977.5, 2060.5 and 2073.7 and the corresponding average Capacity Utilisation Factor (CUF) is 18.45%, 19.61%, 19.18%. There generated energy injected to grid and average performance ratio (PR) is 15.36MWh/yr 0.783, 16.74MWh/yr 0.819 and 16.36MWh/yr 0.795. Solar power is unpredictable on the earth's surface as it is absorbed and scattered by the cloud cover, aerosols and other parameters such as water vapour present in the atmosphere. The parameters depend on the local environment. For investigating the performance of the Solar PV system under the almost same global insolation, meteorological data such as temperature, humidity, wind speed and rainfall of all the three regions has also been considered.