Monitoring of PV systems installed in an extremely hostile climate in southern Algeria: Performance evaluation extended to degradation assessment of various PV panel of single-crystalline technologies.

• Performance evaluation of different PV pumping systems installed in the south of Algeria. • The performance of the PVS was evaluated using the SV method. • Degradation assessment of 3 brands of sc-Si based technologies under outdoor tests. • The system losses estimation is used for degradation assessment. • PV panel degradation is between 0.88 and 2.44 %/year, which is related to the period of exposure. Any photovoltaic (PV) system technology must have been experienced for at least a year to provide valuable information about its seasonal behavior, which requires knowledge of the effects of each component of the PV installation chain. An experimental bench of different PV pumping systems using different PV panels was tested, which these PV systems (PVSs) consist of many brands of single-crystalline silicon (sc-Si) based technologies, including three manufacturers: ET-M53675, Isofotón (I-75 and I-100). This paper used the SV (sophisticated verification) method of analyzing and evaluating PVS performances in detail, for which we have developed a process to achieve good accuracy calculation, intended to estimate their various losses. This method was applied to the databases collected between 2014 and 2020. The output of real energy relative to its installed energy for four PVS configurations is between 72.7 % and 93.6 %, and in some cases it goes down to 48.8 %. This experimental study was extended to assess the degradation rate (DR) of PV panels exposed for long periods in the Saharan environment. Results show that after 2.5 years of operation for the ET-M53675 panels that are newly installed keep the same peak power, while PV panels that have been in operation for between 8 and 10 years have lost between 14.2 % and 19.5 % of their initial power value for Isofotón I-100 and Isofotón I-75 modules, respectively. The installed power in the Isofotón I-100 modules that have operated for more than 14 years has degraded by 23.59 %. This study is an effort to check and assess the feasibility of PVSs and the defects in PV modules found in newer and older installations in a desert environment at real operating conditions to enrich the databases concerning the DR of the various PV panels in the various environments around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]