- Monday, December 1, 2008
- Published at:Power Systems Design Europe
- As the world faces the economic, environmental, and political consequences of its heavy dependence on fossil fuels for energy, the search for a suitable alternative only grows more intense.
The collection of solar energy through photovoltaic (PV) cells is a particularly promising technology. Sunshine is an abundant resource, while PV technology is clean, quiet, and suitable for distributed installations. Gridtied PV technology allows the integration of PV resources into the utility grid near points of load.
Today, cost is the primary challenge facing PV power systems. Presently, the solar electricity price index ranges from 21.41¢/kWhr for industrial applications to 37.78¢/kWhr for residential applications. This price index is primarily driven by PV module cost (~40%-50% of system cost), inverter cost (<10% of system cost), balance of the system costs (~10%-20% of system cost), and labor and installation costs (~30%-40% of system cost). Since the inverter cost co
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- Tuesday, November 18, 2008
- Published at:IEEE Energy2030 (conference)
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The vast growth of distributed photovoltaic (PV) generation systems has led to new trends in integrated PV systems. The AC PV module is one of these trends where a PV panel and a micro-inverter are integrated into a single AC PV source. This reduces installation complexity and provides for a true plug-n-play PV system. This paper discusses the basics and design considerations of AC PV modules.
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