Climate-based empirical model for PV module temperature estimation in tropical environment

The paper proposes new mathematical models to estimating PV module temperature for poly and mono crystalline technologies in tropical climate such as in Malaysia. The developed models are based on measured hourly global solar radiation, ambient temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and module temperature. All data were collected over the year 2009 at GreenTech 92 kWp installed PV system in Selangor, Malaysia. The models were compared using r, MBE, RMSE, and MPE. The results showed that the proposed models give the highest value of correlation coefficient r, and good result when considering statistical indicators i.e. low RMSE, low MBE, and low MPE values. The results show that the proposed regression models have advantages over the conventional approaches for calculating the hourly and day-average PV module temperature, and give the closest results comparing to the actual measurements. The proposed approaches can be used as effective tools for predicting the PV module temperature, whether a simple PV module, open rack system, BIPV installations, or even PV/Thermal collector, in remote and rural locations with no direct measurement equipment. The proposed models can be very useful in studying PV system performance and estimating its energy output.