Monitoring the performance of the building attached photovoltaic (BAPV) system in Shanghai

Abstract This work presents the performance monitoring of the first home-based grid-connected roof-mounted building attached photovoltaic (BAPV) system located in Shanghai, China. The system, whose capacity is ∼2992 Wp, began to operate in late December, 2006. The photovoltaic performance is monitored and analyzed from years 2007 to 2009. The average annual output and average daily output are 3189.13 kW h and 8.74 kW h. The predicted yearly energy output is 3220.21 kW h by software of PVSYST. The annual global solar radiation on horizontal, predicted and measured on tilt are 1315.15 kW h/m 2 , 1320.24 kW h/m 2 and 1323.09 kW h/m 2 , respectively. The daily reference yield, array yield and final yield are 3.62 h/d, 3.01 h/d and 2.86 h/d, respectively. The average daily capture loss and system loss of the overall BAPV array per month are very low and ∼0.61 h/d and 0.16 h/d in value, respectively, which means that the BAPV array matches well with the inverters. The average monthly performance ratio, system efficiency and array efficiency are 80.66%, 10.73% and 11.34%, respectively. The difference between system efficiency and array efficiency is ∼0.60%, which means the average inverter efficiency is about 94.60%.