Planning of Photovoltaic Power Plants

The importance of renewable energies for the electrical power supply is growing rapidly worldwide. Photovoltaics (PV) plays an important role with growing interests in the energy mix of the future.

The design of photovoltaic power plants is very complex. There is a large number of degrees of freedom in the selection and placement of various components, and it is practically impossible to determine the best system layout manually. Here, automated processes not only reduce the design effort dramatically, but are moreover able to take advantage of the existing room for improvement.

Planungsalternativen errechnen.
© ITWM
Calculating alternative plannings.

Development of a planning software

To this end we develop a software concept in cooperation with Siemens Smart Generation Solutions that solves this complicated issue with the help of multi-criteria optimization techniques. The software is able to construct a variety of good PV plant layouts in less than a minute. To evaluate and compare these generated solutions, we determine the expected annual yield of the plants by using a weather simulation. In addition to that, we calculate complex financial measures as the LCOE (levelized cost of energy) or the NPV (net present value) to find the most efficient PV plant from a financial perspective.

 

Project Partner:

Siemens AG