Photovoltaic systems for Canadian prairie regions

Conference · Sat Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 1983 · INTELEC, Int. Telecommun. Energy Conf. (Proc.); (United States)

OSTI ID:5659004

Nigrin, J

The communications industry has a need for economic low power generators for their remote sites, with minimized power consumption. Photovoltaic generators (PV) promising hardware simplicity, low cost and low maintenance have the potential to fill this need. The operational record of PV generators is rather poor in harsh environment of the Canadian prairies. The authors' analysis of long term radiation data, field and laboratory tests show that often ignored cyclic winter radiation extremes and poor selection, operation and maintenance of batteries are the most frequent causes of PV system failures. They derive a reliable PV sizing curve for Edmonton (53/sup 0/N, 114/sup 0/W) and study various PV designs. At a cost of $20,000 per 100W a hybrid PV-TEG generator is shown to promise reliable operation which is not affected by extreme weather fluctuations of the Canadian prairies.

• Research Organization: Unconventional Power Research, Edmonton, Alberta
• OSTI ID: 5659004
• Report Number(s): CONF-831010-
• Journal Information: INTELEC, Int. Telecommun. Energy Conf. (Proc.); (United States), Conference: International telecommunications energy conference, Tokyo, Japan, 18 Oct 1983
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
COMMUNICATIONS
PHOTOVOLTAIC POWER SUPPLIES
RELIABILITY
USES
BENCH-SCALE EXPERIMENTS
CANADA
FIELD TESTS
HYBRID SYSTEMS
PERFORMANCE
REMOTE AREAS
SEASONAL VARIATIONS
SOLAR RADIATION
WEATHER
ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT
EQUIPMENT
NORTH AMERICA
POWER SUPPLIES
RADIATIONS
SOLAR EQUIPMENT
STELLAR RADIATION
TESTING
VARIATIONS
140501* - Solar Energy Conversion- Photovoltaic Conversion
140600 - Solar Energy- Photovoltaic Power Systems