The impact of height installation on the performance of PV panels integrated into a green roof in tropical conditions

This paper presents a study on the effect of the height installation of PV panels in a green roof integrated photovoltaic system (GRIPV) considering warm and humid climate conditions. According to recent work, there is mutual benefit between these two applications in temperate conditions. However, it is necessary to study this interaction in tropical conditions and to establish the significance of height as a factor of installation. Therefore, an experiment was designed using three PV panels of 250 W in portrait configuration with 10 degrees of inclination; each PV panel uses a micro-inverter. The monitoring system can gather data such as ambient temperature, PV panel temperatures, solar radiation and electrical variables. The green roof used (440 m(2)) is located on the Electrical Engineering Building of Universidad Industrial de Santander (Colombia), where the latitude is +7.1 degrees and the ambient temperature varies between 24 degrees C and 30 degrees C during daily sun-time (6 am and 6 pm), while the relative humidity fluctuates between 60% and 90%. The experiment considers two height installations (50 cm and 75 cm) for both types of roof - black and green - for three weeks. According to the results, the lower height installation and the green roof increases the power output by 2.0% and 1.0%, respectively and the combined effect is nearly 2.8%.