The application of the standalone PV power system is currently considered as an alternative
source of electricity for remote areas. The energy authority and An-Najah National University in
the Palestinian territories worked on electrification of many small communities and villages by
using centralised and decentralised solar PV systems. In this paper, long-term performance
assessment of two 4.8 kW standalone PV pilot systems at two different villages is depicted. The
unused energy of the storage battery, which is equal to 50% of the PV array output, is found to
be the key factor of having low-performance ratio in the range of 0.25–0.65. The simulation
results using PVSYST software illustrate that adopting the two-axis solar tracking mode for
standalone PV systems has a significant impact on its output. It can reduce the size of the PV
array by up to 50%. It is proposed to connect groups of villages with a local micro grid which
can be fed by the surplus energy from the different standalone systems. Cost analysis of the
current and the proposed design shows that the payback period of the micro-grid with twoaxis
tracking PV array is less than half of the period of the current standalone system.

Title

Australian Journal of Mechanical Engineering

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Publisher Country

Australia

Indexing

Scopus

Impact Factor

0.96

Publication Type

Online only

Volume

10

Year

2019

Pages

1448-4846