Performance test conditions for direct temperature elements of multiple PV array configurations in Malaysia

Solar PV technology and application has been given the highest priority in Malaysia Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) program based on the per kWh electricity rate achieving huge cumu lative quota of 18,000 MW. The high enthusiasm and green culture is based on the fact that solar energy source is free, abundance, clean and Malaysia receive approximately 6 hours of sunlight every day the whole year round. This study explores the performance test conditions (PTC) for PV arrays in the tropics based on the direct temperature effect whereby surface temperature (Ts) is implied to the Flat (FF) PV and Tracking Flat (TF) PV array while the concentrating PV (CPV) array implies bottom temperature (Tb) of the Monocrystalline PV module. The field measurement for 10 months results in array efficiency of 3.04 % for CPV, 10.04 % for FF and the highest conversion efficiency of 10.78 % from TF array. Recent studies have proven such significant reduction of 0.5 % in energy generation based on 1 0C increase in PV array temperature. Based on this critical value and field validation, contrarily, it is found that an increase of 1 0C of direct temperature element results in 3.3 % of array efficiency increase for CPV, 6.7 % for TF array and the highest increment of 8.2 % for FF array.