Evaluation of energy production for PV microinverter system installed at the University Rectory Building at Tecnologico de Costa Rica

The implementation of microinverters in photovoltaic systems has the advantage of independently harnessing the power at the point of the maximum power of each photovoltaic panel, regardless of the conditions of orientation, shadows, and degradation that each of them may present. This stands for a significant advantage since it avoids power imbalance problems that can occur in a string of panels. This article presents an analysis of the energy production for the microinverter system installed in the rooftop of the rectory building of the Tecnologico de Costa Rica. The grid-connected system has a nominal d.c. power of 8.3 kWp, using 31 Canadian Solar model CS6P-270 panels, each connected to an Enphase model M215 microinverter. The system has been in operation since March 2017, and for 46 production months, the total generation was 48.892 MWh with an average performance of 1.570 MWh. In this evaluation, it was possible to verify that the solar panels located towards the south generated 3.6% more electricity than the panels located towards the north, which represents an additional generation of 11.4 days per year with respect to the panels oriented towards the north.