PV system on a transport container
Picture: Sandia Nationwide Laboratories, Bruce King
Researchers from the US Division of Power’s Sandia Nationwide Laboratories are assessing photo voltaic technology in excessive environments north of the Arctic Circle. The workforce just lately put in a 4.3 kW PV system on prime of a storage container at Oliktok Level, Alaska. The system makes use of bifacial photo voltaic modules from an undisclosed producer.
“Information collected at Oliktok Level will observe each day power beneficial properties and assist develop predictive fashions of power efficiency based mostly on the lean angle and orientation of the photo voltaic modules,” mentioned the analysis institute.
Temperatures on the distant location can go as little as -43 C, with a wind chill issue of -57 C. Buildings are coated by ice for many of the 12 months and are uncovered to harsh shoreline circumstances.
“Oliktok Level is a really environmentally related discipline web site – it checks all of the bins,” mentioned Andrew Glen, the supervisor of atmospheric sciences at Sandia Nationwide Laboratories. “We go from everlasting ice by the winter, with permafrost, to the ocean ice breaking apart, to open water and a soften season the place the bottom softens and turns to mud.”
The outcomes from the system will present which system designs and applied sciences are best in northern environments with restricted solar within the winter.
“Alaska, and Oliktok particularly, represents an edge case for PV deployment,” mentioned Bruce King, the director of Sandia’s Photovoltaic Programs Analysis Lab. “Studying about edge circumstances helps inform standard system design and will determine alternatives to extend power harvest which may not in any other case be thought of. This may be notably essential for PV deployments in different geographic areas which can be additionally not optimum.”
The workforce mentioned that it hopes the Oliktok Level undertaking will assist to facilitate the rollout of climate-optimized PV programs for distant off-grid communities in Alaska.
