SOLARCTIC

Introduction

This project was done under the supervision of Dr. John Cook and SUNLAB.

Motivation

The main purpose was to prepare equipment to study a novel technology cluster particularly effective in northern conditions. It proposes to place two demonstrator research stations at different latitudes in northern communities.

Installation

Each station would contain monofacial and bifacial photovoltaic (PV) panels, two-dimensional solar trackers, conventional inverters and microinverters, battery management systems, weather instrumentation, solar irradiation spectrometers, and Intelligent Distribution Panels (IDP).

Contributors

Dr. John Cook

Tasks

• Installing a solar power generation and monitoring system;
• Developing photovoltaic deployment strategy and cost structure;
• Producing system-level and circuit-level schematics using Autocad Electrical®;
• Sourcing photovoltaic and power conditioning components for system integration;
• Preparing test equipment for characterizing solar panels (Daystar I-V Curve Tracer).