Investigation of the effect of snowfall and ice on energy generation of grid connected string and micro inverters

This thesis study was carried out to determine and evaluate the effects of snowfall and icing on the performance of grid-connected photovoltaic plants with different panels, inclination angles and inverter technology. Performance analyzes were carried out using atmospheric variables obtained from meteorology station and operational data under real operating conditions of grid-connected hybrid inverter and microinverter systems installed in the same facility area. The grid-connected hybrid inverter system consists of 36 monocrystalline panels placed on the carrier system with a fixed tilt angle of 30° in the south direction and horizontal orientation. The grid-connected microinverter system consists of nine micro-inverters with double panel inputs and 18 polycrystalline modules which are placed on the carrier system with six different fixed tilt angles of 0°, 10°, 20°, 30°, 40° and 50° in the south direction and horizontal orientation. These photovoltaic facilities were established in the open facility area of the Vocational School of Technical Sciences within the campus area of Konya Technical University. The performance results obtained for hybrid and microinverter systems were compared with the results obtained in previous studies in the literature performance variables known as string efficiency, final efficiency, reference efficiency, system loss, string capture loss, inverter efficiency, performance ratio, system efficiency and capacity factor. The results show that snow and icing accumulated on the panel surfaces cause losses in both inverter systems and affect the hybrid inverter system, which consists of many panels connected in series, more than the microinverter system.