Algorithm to control power production from solar photovoltaic panels

Abstract

End consumer of energy is getting more cautious of their environmental footprint and with the cost of renewable energy sources like photo-voltaic solar progressively declining, it is expected that the percentage contribution from these new and renewable sources in overall power generation will increase. However, the renewable energy sources carry their own set of drawbacks which is slowing their widespread acceptance. First and foremost is the variability in generation, then controlling the power output from solar is also not trivial since the generation is highly dependent on the external factors such as solar irradiance. Furthermore, there is a mismatch between the demand profile from the consumer and the supply profile of solar. This increased integration of renewable sources in the present grid creates a set of problems such as over voltage, power back flow and instability. In this paper we propose a curtailment based solution to the problem of over production. We provide an algorithm which controls the power output from solar panels. It delivers maximum possible power during the times of low irradiance and curtails the power output during the times of peak generation. With real-data on solar panel output across multiple prosumers, we are able to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.