General layout design of mountain PV plant based on array spacing planning

Abstract

Reasonable determination of the installation inclination and array spacing of PV power plant modules is essential to improve the power generation efficiency of PV power plants. This paper firstly derives the formula for calculating the north-south spacing of PV arrays with arbitrary slope inclination and visualizes the north-south spacing of complex mountain PV arrays using ArcGIS. Secondly, a mountain PV array system is proposed to ensure that the system can still operate at the maximum power point in real-time when the solar radiation intensity changes drastically due to unpredictable environmental variables. Finally, to verify the feasibility of the active PV array system in real-life production, an experimental platform is built, and an operational test experiment of the active PV array system under partial shading conditions is conducted, as well as a long-term power boost comparison test. The experimental results show that the mountain PV array system has a 95.7% matching degree in the operation test experiment, which can be perfectly adapted to most PV plants; in the power boost comparison test, the power generation of the traditional PV system is 254Wh, and the power generation of the mountain PV array system is 483Wh, which is about 1.9 times higher than the performance of the traditional PV system. The mountain PV array system has good adaptability to various harsh and unexpected conditions and solves the problem of improving the power output of PV systems in the shadow-shaded environment of mountainous areas, which improves the general usability of PV.