Comparison of photovoltaic module performance at Pu'u Wa'a Wa'a

Hawaii is experiencing a substantial increase in grid-tied PV installations and utility companies are concerned with the resulting grid management issues. To address these concerns and to enable the utilities to make informed decisions, the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute (HNEI) of the University of Hawaii initiated a PV test program that provides high-resolution data to characterize module and array performance under a variety of local climatic conditions. In the first phase of the project HNEI developed a PV test bed located at Pu'u Wa'a Wa'a ranch on the Kona coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. Initially we selected seven different PV technologies for testing consisting of poly-crystalline, mono-crystalline, amorphous, and mixed technologies. The test modules comprise 200 W units, tilted at 20°, with maximum power point trackers, via small inverters connected to the grid or via charge controllers connected to a battery and load bank. The data is sampled at 1 Hz and stored in a database for visualization and analysis. This paper presents a description of the test bed design, the high data rate Data Acquisition System (DAS), and initial experimental results.