How to design a large Solar Photovoltaic Power Plant (1MW & above)

 Hi,

I am working actively on designing Solar Photovoltaic System for
various applications in Oman. I am aware that there are many large
photovoltaic power generating stations exist in Europe & USA.
I would like to know how to design such large power plant system. I am
writing down my questions for 1 MW plant:

1. How to define the photovoltaic system voltage for large power plant
(1 MW or above )?
2. How can you convert the DC power produced by photovoltaic into AC
power, as that size large inverter does not exist.
3. How to size the transmission line and connect to the available
grid?
4. What are the types of metering used in those large capacity plant?
5. How to synchronize the solar Power with the Grid Power?

I hope any one of the photovoltaic experts in this group can anser my
questions.

Bye.

Siddhartha
Muscat, Oman

  Siddhartha wrote:

That depends on quite a few factors, including design codes and
standards (I have no idea which ones might be followed in Oman),
manufacturer recommendations on your various system components, and
possibly the AC output voltage desired by the utility. In the US, even
at the utility level I think PV systems generally do not exceed 600V
(though I'm not 100% sure about that).


Use multiple inverters in parallel.


Again, that's going to depend largely on local standards and
requirements, and the requirements of your utility. The IEEE standards
1547 and 929 should give you some idea of what's required, though I have
no idea whether they are applicable in Oman.


You ought to be able to meter the amount of energy sent to the grid
using the same methods that any other power plant would. Is that not
what you mean?


That functionality is generally built into the inverter -- look for a
synchronous inverter.

 
Thank you very much for your answers. Another question, using
photovltaic modules, what is the maximum size of power plant can be
built. I was told that for larger plant, solar thermal power plant is
a better option. What is the typical generating energy cost of large
photovoltaic plant vis a vis solar thermal power plant.

Regards.

Siddhartha

 Siddhartha wrote:
...

There is no maximum size for a PV solar installation. It's simply
a question of how much money you want to spend. Unfortunately, the
cost per kW of such an installation remains pretty constant after
a certain minimum size.

Solar thermal power plants get cheaper the bigger they are (up
to a point) because steam turbines are more efficient the bigger
they are and the technology is already well developed for coal
and nuclear power plants.

Anthony

 Anthony Matonak wrote:

I pretty much agree with that, though depending on plant configuration
you might have to take geography into account in the calculation. A
plant of any type -- PV or solar thermal -- that relies on imaging
optics (e.g., mirrors to focus sunlight on a target) is going to have
difficulty in a region that sees a lot of cloudy weather. I don't know
much about Oman, but given its location on the globe I'm guessing you
don't see a lot of clouds there....