Towards More Precise Estimates of Land-Use Requirements for Solar Photovoltaic Power Plants
Abstract
In this work, the land-use requirements of single-axis tracking solar PV power plants is derived using a software package developed in Python. Computer modelling is used to create a power plant layout to directly calculate the packing factor (PF) and generator-to-system area ratio (GSR) of the facility based on a provided land parcel and design factors. These factors, together with the solar PV module data and proposed DC/AC oversizing ratio, can deduce an estimate of the solar PV power plant capacity (in MW). The software package is tested with a land parcel data set to deduce the mean, variability and sensitivity of the output capacity to provide a confidence interval for power plant capacity for a given land size.