Thermal Modeling and Verification of PV Module Temperature and Energy Yield Using Outdoor Measurements for Ankara, Turkey

Ankara is in the Central Anatolia region of Turkey where the climate is dry-continental with an annual solar insolation of around 1750 kWh/m
²
. In the transition to renewable energy, detailed analyses are required to ensure effective and economic utilization of the available solar resource. An essential part of these analyses is to calculate expected energy yield. For photovoltaic (PV) systems, this includes the effect of temperature on the PV efficiency, which determines the power yield of the PV modules. In this study, a first-principles thermal modeling approach is improved by adding the speed and direction of wind across the PV module into a forced convection term as well as including the temperature dependency of the module conversion efficiency. The analytical model is based on the principle of conservation of energy and uses meteorological data that are readily available from most state meteorological services. The mathematical analysis is suitable to predict the performance of a proposed PV installation without the time and expense of installing and monitoring a pilot system. The mathematical model is compared against measured data from the METU-GUNAM Outdoor Test Facility in Ankara to validate the methodology. Preliminary analyses showed that the model performs well especially during sunrise and sunsets shoulders of the diurnal cycle with a deviation of only a few W/m
²
for the electrical power yield and about 2°C for the module temperature. However, these deviations could become as large as 12 W/m
²
and 8°C at solar noon which suggests that the model still requires further improvement. In general, this error was found to be less that obtained by using basic explicit correlation methods and offers the advantage that it can be used for other geographical environments for which insolation and meteorological data is available without needing to construct a test-site.