Developing a model for predicting optimum daily tilt angle of a PV solar system at different geometric, physical and dynamic parameters

ABSTRACT

Capturing the solar radiation that passed through the Earth’s atmosphere and received by solar panels depends on several parameters. In this paper, all governing parameters of the total daily solar radiation are provided in mathematical relations. In the first stage, the mathematical model is converted to a computer-based model by using the MathCAD program. In the second stage, however, the control variables, tilt angles, surface azimuth angles, day of year, and ground reflectance are identified. Based on the total daily solar radiation objective function, three scenarios are proposed in this study for different situations of variation of control variables. In the final stage the optimization flowchart is designed for the optimum daily tilt angle. The model’s innovation to simultaneously analyze the mean effects of control variables on the dynamic and optimum tilt angles simulation was designed based on 3 scenarios for a PV solar system of the building in Montreal in different seasons. After analyzing the correlation among the scenarios, values of the average optimum tilt angles for each scenario are simulated in angle ranges of 60° to 65° for the winter, 20° to 22.5° for the spring, 27.5° to 35° for the summer, and 68° to 75° for fall.

KEYWORDS:

• Total daily solar radiation
• integrated dynamic model
• daily tilt angle optimization
• PV solar system
• MathCAD program

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.