Sensitivity Analysis of a Standalone Photovoltaic System Model Parameters

The values of input variables of any model are cause to undergo changes due to influence of environmental conditions. These changes can be investigated by conducting the sensitivity analysis of input variables with respect to output variables. Sensitivity analysis increases the validity, credibility and assurance of model estimates. The purpose of this study was to identify the most important and sensitive input variables and to prioritize the parameters based on their influence on the model outputs of a standalone photovoltaic (SAPV) system. For that, a normalized local sensitivity analysis and sensitivity index of seven input variables of a SAPV system model with reference to three output parameters namely amount of absorbed solar radiation, maximum photovoltaic (PV) module power output and optimum PV array area has been carried out. It was revealed from the analysis that the most important and sensitive input variable was the amount of total solar radiation and the least important variable was solar azimuth angle and the lowest sensitive variable was wind speed.