Design and Mathematical Modelling of a Solar Carport with Flat Reflector

Sammanfattning: As the world is moving towards the renewable energy, there is increase in usage of the electric vehicles in transport sector. This has led to more consumption of electricity from the grid and thus affecting its stability. To overcome this issue many decentralized charging stations have come of which generating electricity from the solar energy is more popular. These solar carports act as a shelter for the vehicles from various climatic factors such as rain, snow, dust in addition to producing renewable electricity. The main aim of this thesis study is to design a solar carport with the reflector compared to the existing Solar carports. The roof selected for this thesis study is a “V” shaped roof with the PV modules installed on one side of the roof and a reflector installed on the other side of the roof. The objectives of this thesis study are creating a mathematical irradiation and yield model of the PV system with and without a reflector. In addition, find the optimum roof tilt angle for a PV system with the reflector. Finally, determine the optimum increase in the annual energy yield for a PV system with the reflector compared to the PV system without a reflector. Microsoft Excel is used to create the mathematical irradiation and yield model of the PV system. The simulation was done for three different locations by obtaining hourly irradiation and temperature data from the PVsyst software. As a case study four different reflective materials of different specular and diffuse reflectance were chosen for better understanding and comparison. The simulation results showed that there is significant increase in the annual energy yield for a PV system with the reflector for all the locations. The study also shows that the increase in energy yield, optimum roof tilt angle is dependent on the specular and diffuse nature of the reflector. The study has concluded that the increase in the annual energy yield for a PV system with the specular reflector is more compared to a PV system with the diffuse reflector for the lower roof tilt angles and vice versa. It is also clear that the increase in the energy yield is similar for all the three locations. Hence, based on the roof tilt angle the selection of the reflector material needs to be done for an optimum design of the solar carport.