Capacity Factor Of Solar Panels

Energy information administration form eia 860 annual electric generator report and.

Capacity factor of solar panels.

Similarly the average capital costs for utility scale solar pv facilities installed in 2015 were 2 91 per watt in terms of ac capacity and about 2 33 per watt in terms of the dc capacity of the pv modules. While this is true there are a variety of other real world factors that determine how much energy your system will produce throughout the year. One of the key reasons for this low ratio is the nature of renewable power. As we have seen the capacity factor varies quite a bit for solar photovoltaic systems depending on the location.

Capacity factors are a comparison of net generation with available capacity. Displaystyle frac 4 200 000 mbox mw h 365 mbox days times 24 mbox hours day times 2 080 mbox mw 0 23 23. Taking the average figure for annual generation gives a capacity factor of. See the technical note for an explanation of how capacity factors are calculated.

Both systems will generate the same amount of power in the same geographic location. In the real world most solar panels tend to have efficiencies in the 16 19 range though some manufacturers like mission and sunpower have higher end panels that have efficiencies exceeding 20. A post i wrote a little over two years ago concluded that solar pv capacity factors in the us ranged between 13 and 19 with an average of around 16. If this value were estimated using dc capacity the dc capacity factor would be about 22.

Generally it is in the range of 10 25. Energy information administration form eia 923 power plant operations report. 4 200 000 mw h 365 days 24 hours day 2 080 mw 0 23 23. Recently however the us energy information agency published a table showing an average capacity factor of around 28 for utility sized pv plants in the us in 2015.

Consequently the capacity factor of the solar energy system here is much lower than that of phoenix at about 16. Not all solar panels are created equal. The capacity factor for solar panels varies between 15 and 40.