Simulation of Power Produced by a Building Added PV System in Indonesia using virtual reality

In this study a PV system will be simulated using virtual reality software for PV system simulations -called VR4PV - to show the effectiveness of the modelling of PV systems on buildings which are placed in the tropics. The PV system used for this study has been installed in Papua, Indonesia and includes a monitoring system which measures among others the power output and weather variables. The power output of the PV system is simulated based on (i) minutely locally measured weather data, and (ii) hourly publicly available weather data measured in the region. The results are compared with the measured power output in order to evaluate the performance of the VR4PV. The RMSE is found to be in between 437 – 679 W for a PV array of 12 kWp, corresponding to 9% and 16% of the average power output for May 2013 – April 2014, based on the minutely measurements. The hourly weather data is found to be more suitable for the estimation of the monthly energy production. The accuracy makes VR4PV extremely appropriate for assessing the performance of PV systems added to buildings in the tropics, before installation and during use