Development and testing of 1 kWp of floating solar platform

• Main Author: Muhammad Ashhad Naim Bin Mohamad Nasir
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Floating solar platform

Energy generation through solar Photovoltaic is one of the best resolves to solve nowadays environmental problems. Even so, there are a few drawbacks for this alternative mainly the wide area used for farm installation and its low capacity factors compared to the other alternatives. Hence, Floating Photovoltaic (FPV) and solar tracking technologies emerge to counter the issue. A full prototype of floating solar platform is constructed and the safety factors of the platform was conducted through load testing. Using this platform, desktop study was done to investigate its approximate available installation capacity and on the other hand, the inclination study for the solar panel was done to get the best performance at University Tenaga Nasional’s lake. Under the simulation, the highest yield was obtained annually using 0 degrees’ inclination compared to 5, 10 and 15 degrees facing south. Annual yield for inclination facing east versus west was done, and the highest annual yield goes to west inclination thus proves more energy was gained after the afternoon compared to before afternoon. Last but not least, for the computational study, simulations of single axis and dual axis tracker was done in four different places. The increment of yield was calculated and the efficiency was 17.57% and 20.57% for Malaysia, 18.48% and 22.18% for Vietnam, 24.84% and 27.78% for United Kingdom and 40.43% and 56.56% for Garepdam in South Africa for single axis and dual axis solar tracking respectively. This study suggest that the solar tracking technology was more efficient at places with higher irradiation reading. Lastly, Return of Investment and payback period for the prototype was calculated using the respective simulation. ROI calculated was 11.54%, 13.04% and 14.24% for static FPV, Single axis tracking and Dual axis tracking Floating Photovoltaic (FPV) respectively. The respective payback period was 8.7 years, 7.2 years and 7.0 years respectively