KPV: A clear-sky index for photovoltaics

The rapidly growing installed base of distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems is causing increased interest in forecasting their power output. A key step towards this is accurately estimating the output from a PV system based on the known output from a nearby PV system. However, each PV system is unique with its own hardware configuration, orientation, shading, etc. Thus, the process of using the power output from one system to estimate the power output of another nearby system is not necessarily straightforward. In order to address these challenges, a modified clear-sky index for photovoltaics is proposed. This index is the ratio of the instantaneous PV power output to the instantaneous theoretical clear-sky power output derived from a clear-sky radiation model and PV system simulation routine. This definition performs better than previous clear-sky indices when both PV systems’ characteristics are known and the two PV systems have similar orientations. Through this index, the performance of a nearby PV system can be predicted quite accurately. This is demonstrated through the analysis of power output data from five residential PV systems in Canberra, Australia.