Performance Analysis of two same capacity Utility Scale Solar Plants in Nepal

Abstract

The rapid growth in Utility Scale Solar Plants all around the world is acting like an Indicator of the rapid growth the Renewable Energy Sector has achieved in the last decade. Along with the number of benefits it has to offer, the growing Solar Power Generation sector comes along with several challenges. Despite the Design, Procurement, Installation and Commissioning of these Plants are much easier and convenient than the Hydropower Plants and the irradiance levels through-out the country is quite optimum for the Solar Power Generation, still there are many concerns and questions to the further growth of this Utility Scale Solar Power Generation Sector due to the factors, like: Power Generation hours limited to day, gradual degradation in efficiency of Solar Panels, requirement of huge land area, much variation in Power generation due to changing weather, shading, dust on panels etc. The current study conducts the Performance Analysis of two Utility Scale Solar Plants of Same Installed Capacity, 1.2096 MW in two different locations of the country to understand how Certain Parameters: Weather, Location, Design of the Plants, Wind Speed effect on the Power Generation from the Panels. 1.2096 MW each Solar Plants of Dhalkebar and Simara have been taken under the Study. The data of Power Generation for a period of 1 year (1st July, 2022 to 30th June, 2023) from these plants were collected to generate the idea of the actual Performance of each of these plants, which was further compared with the Outputs of Simulation done by using PVsyst 7.4.4. The annual S.Y., C.U.F.