Charaf Hajjaj

Cadi Ayyad University | UCAM · Renewables Energies Department

The Earth's climate is intricately tied to solar irradiance, which constitutes the energy emitted by the sun at any given instant. This energy flux is influenced by diverse factors, including the Earth-Sun distance and involve solar activity dynamics such as solar magnetism, the solar wind, and the occurrence of sunspots. This research endeavors t...

All climate processes on Earth depend on solar irradiance as their primary driver. The past climate changes can be linked to variations in Total Solar Irradiance (TSI). Measurements are made from the ground to estimate the solar irradiance outside the atmosphere, i.e. the total solar irradiance value, but the results obtained lack the necessary pre...

Accurate prediction of photovoltaic (PV) power output is crucial for assessing the feasibility of early-stage projects in relation to specific site weather conditions. While various mathematical models have been used in the past for PV power prediction, most of them only consider irradiance and ambient temperature, neglecting other important meteor...

The lagoon is a natural system protected from the sea by a dune barrier creating energy from the movement of rising and falling tides, thus providing a sustainable option for extracting energy from tidal currents. The energy that can be extracted is one of the most potential renewable energy sources. Therefore, the interaction of tidal currents wit...

Validation of the Spencer model of solar irradiance variation outside the layer of the earth’s atmosphere

Photovoltaic (PV) production is highly dependent on global solar irradiance (GHI) and often experiences irregular fluctuations. With the continuous increase in PV penetration rates, GHI forecasting methods are becoming important to ensure optimal management of the energy produced. In this study, three forecasting models - Multilayer Perceptron (MLP...

The potential induced degradation (PID) phenomenon of p-type c-Si photovoltaic technology is a severe degradation mode that caught the attention of researchers since it can significantly affect the energy production of the PV plants. Various modeling/lab-tests have been conducted but very few are the in-situ experiments estimating the behavior of P...

The islanding of grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) installations is a difficult problem that leads to many protection and security problems. A variety of islanding detection methods (IDMs) are proposed in several studies and these techniques are categorized into passive, active and communication based methods. This study describes the IDM adopted to...

The development and deployment of photovoltaic power plants is still growing all over the world with the significant decrease of costs and by reducing the energy dependence to fossil fuels especially in some countries in the MENA region. Besides, to the abundant solar radiation in this region, the semi-arid and arid climate promote harsh weather co...

Industrial Process Heat (IPH) represents a promising sector of application for solar concentration technologies-the Linear Fresnel Reflectors (LFR) as an alternative to the conventional source of thermal energy. Morocco is endowed with an abundant solar resource as other countries in the MENA region, with high level of DNI available over the year e...

In this paper, a new method of modeling PV modules in the Pspice simulator is proposed. This method consists in describing the behaviour of PV modules and the evolution of their I-V characteristics as a function of the temperature and the solar irradiance. The developed modelling technique is based on the internal physical parameters (photogenerate...

Photovoltaic technology is still under development in many countries around the world. However, the desert regions are still the most attractive zones in terms of solar radiation and land use availability. On the other hand, the semi-arid and arid climates predominate in those regions where dust concentration is relatively high, which influence dra...

Nowadays, hybrid solar plant with Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) and Photovoltaic systems (PV) is the optimal installation for solar energy conversion. However, a cleaning strategy should be performed with an optimized schedule in order to avoid energy loss as well as to minimize the cleaning and the O&M costs. In this paper, for the first time, in...

Photovoltaic technology is still developing in the MENA region. Nevertheless, soiling remains a major cause for performance loss in PV Modules. In this work, the soiling rate is modeled as a function of environmental data with several modeling methods such as the multiple linear regression model (MLR), multiple linear regression with interaction mo...

The objective of the current paper is to evaluate the performances drop of a photovoltaic system composed of a new PV module conception without EVA encapsulation. After three years of operation under harsh atmospheric condition at Green Energy Park research facility, in the mid-south of Morocco, the system shows an energy drop around 1.8kWhe in one...

The characterization at indoor conditions is insufficient to study the behavior of PV generators physical parameters depending on environmental factors. For this purpose, current-voltage (I-V) characteristics measurements of a monocrystalline PV module are taken using an appropriate I-V curve tracer previously designed for sampling measurements und...

At an early stage of Photovoltaic (PV) plant project development, different aspects need to be investigated to ensure an efficient integration of this technology in the energy mix. The PV modules are one of the important components in a PV plant. Thus, they should operate reliably and above 80% of their rated power output, for at least 25 years. Ha...

It is established that the efficiency of the most common solar cells decreases when their temperature increases. The photovoltaic module characteristics, especially its efficiency and its maximum power, are defined in standard test conditions (STC), while their nominal operating temperature is higher than ambient temperature and depending on operat...

The assessment of photovoltaic (PV) modules performance and reliability at operating conditions is very important considering the large investment in PV power plans. One of the important parameters on PV modules reliability is the degradation rate (Rd). This parameter has an important implication on the return-on-investment calculations. The aim of...

The present study focuses on the effects of PID on the performance of c-Si based solar PV panels installed on the mid-southwestern- Morocco for 3 years. The investigation has been divided into two parts: (i) The measurement of the power drop due to PID; (ii) since the PID is a reversible phenomenon, the polarity inversion technique has been used to...

At the early stage of photovoltaic plants feasibility study, the assessment of the power production and the technology performances is a necessity. To do so, engineers usually use software’s and prediction models. Plenty of models are available in the literature, nevertheless, the selection of the most suitable one to be use in a specific climate i...

Due to the high solar irradiation records, desert regions are the most suitable for hosting photovoltaic power plants [1]. Nevertheless, these regions are characterized by the presence of dust and aerosols that can be deposited on the surface of the panels causing a considerable drop on the plants efficiency, thus, the power production. The objecti...

An experimental study is carried out on an affordable cost air heater with a constant volumetric airflow of 0.015 kg/s m 2 , under sunlight in a coastal area. It is a single pass solar air heater with glazing and corrugated sheet metal absorber locally manufactured and destined for red algae Gelidium sesquipedale drying. The heater is continuously...

Nowadays, the investments in large-scale photovoltaic power projects is increasing around the world and more especially in the MENA region. To encourage investors to install more PV capacities, it's important to provide guaranties on the benefits in term of production especially in harsh and semi-arid climates. For this reason, modeling of photovol...

The understanding and quantifying of photovoltaic (PV) modules degradation is important to ensure their lifetime at harsh conditions. A test campaign on several pc-Si PV modules at semi-arid climate has been conducted after 3 years of outdoor exposure. As a result, 58,5% of modules showed snail trails formation. This defect has been observed increa...

At the early stage of photovoltaic plants feasibility study, the assessment of the power production and the technology performances is a necessity. To do so, engineers usually use software's and prediction models. Plenty of models are available in the literature, nevertheless, the selection of the most suitable one to be use in a specific climate i...

A model for the operating temperature of crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) module is proposed. The model represents the outdoor operating temperature of a PV module as a function of ambient temperature, in-plane irradiance, wind speed and a number of coefficients determined from in-situ module temperature and power output measurements. The mode...

The performance of a photovoltaic (PV) module depends on real operating conditions such as solar irradiance, ambient temperature, and wind speed, in addition to solar module technologies. To characterize a PV module under these conditions, the measure of the entire current-voltage (I-V) curve in short time requires a suitable data acquisition devic...

This paper aims to give a critical overview of the existing prediction models for PV modules performance over a long term. Indeed, each model takes into account a number of meteorological parameters (cell temperature, ambient temperature, solar radiation and solar spectrum), and depends on regressive coefficients to weight each term of the equation...

Physical parameters of a photovoltaic cell can be determined from its experimental current-voltage characteristic. The accurate determination of these parameters is particularly dependent on experimental measurements conditions. The reliability of measurements of temperature variations and intensity of solar radiation are dependent on the sampling...

The modeling of a solar cell is useful for any operation of efficiency optimization or of diagnostic of the photovoltaic generator. Usually, a solar cell is represented by an equivalent electrical circuit which the physical parameters can be determined experimentally from the (current-voltage)characteristic. For the classical two exponential model,...

The performances of an exposed to a light source photovoltaic solar panel decrease when its temperature increases. In this work, we present a cooling device constituted by a copper serpentine, a pump with an adjustable flow rate and a metallic plate exposed to solar irradiations. This system is intended to study experimentally the coolant flow effe...