RESULTS OF THE EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF A SOLAR POWER PLANT
Recently, solar energy has found expanding agricultural applications due to the pressing need for new power generating sources in distributed networks. However, the high acquisition costs of photovoltaic systems and the low utilisation rate hinder their widespread introduction. The study purpose was to estimate the efficiency of a solar power plant and to verify its specifications under climatic conditions of the North-West of Russia. The study tested a specially designed and manufactured autonomous solar power plant. The installation consisted of six hetero-structural photovoltaic modules with the capacity of 315 W each (Hevel Energy Group, Russia), a storage battery, an inverter, and a charge controller. The study used the “passive experiment” method and statistical data analysis. The results were obtained for the natural conditions under different insolation and ambient air temperature. The solar plant demonstrated around 22% efficiency. The combined small-size (up to 50-70 kW) electrical power stations were found most promising for electricity supply of the facilities in the remote private farms - pig houses for 10 to 30 head, houses for rabbits, poultry, sheep, and goats as well as residential houses.