Quantification of solar radiation in Algeria, application to the sizing of photovoltaic systems

Abstract

Algeria is an interesting country for the exploitation of solar energy; it has a considerable territory of solar energy, so it is a major interest for a country like ours to estimate this type of energy to identify possible and effective means that used in a policy context of energy of the country. The optimal sizing of photovoltaic systems is very important, especially in an economic point of view, it allows to design an efficient system, avoiding load losses while minimizing the cost of installation, this can be done by using data of solar radiation as well as insolation levels. Therefore, it is important to carry out the quantification of solar data on the Algerian territory. For that, and throughout this thesis, we will try to develop physical and empirical models for estimating and forecasting hourly, daily and monthly solar radiation data from multiple sources (insolation and radiation), these models will be applied and tested for different climatic regions of Algeria. At the end, a map of solar radiation zoning will be established. The application to the sizing of photovoltaic system will show that the results in an hourly scale are more precise than a daily scale especially for the performance of the photovoltaic system.