Spent the last week in the United Arab Emirates on a potential solar development project.  The heart of the issue is that development growth has outstripped the capability of the grid to power this growth.  Is solar power part of the solution?

Part of the solution may be what I saw in Abu Dhabi, at the site of a new Sir Norman Foster designed zero carbon city.  Located in the emirate with the fourth largest oil reserves in the world, Al Masdar (Arabic for "the source") plans to meet a significant amount of its power needs with a 200MW array. 

The question is how well PV will work in the summer heat of the UAE.  PV does not like heat--it produces less power when the cells increase in temperature.

Summer ambient temps can reach 45C [113F] and temperature at the cell [Tcell] can be 25C +/-5C over that.  To determine how PV actually performs, Dr. Abu-Zaid at Masdar is running the largest PV competition in the world--testing over 30 1kW systems from manufacturers in UAE field conditions.  Data from the competition, including

• power output,
• temperature,
• power loss from dust and
• peak power output

using identical inverter and measurement equipment will be used to determine what type of pv power is best suited for desert conditions.

At roughly 9A that morning, with 25kW installed, these systems were collectively performing at over 50% of max--in February!  The UAE has great potential as a market for PV.

Dr. Abu-Zaid is doing the right thing.  There is a dearth of actual performance data available for use when designing systems.  This competition will be a great add to the Photon data.  And it motivates me to incorporate ways to get more performance from my systems deployed in high-heat environments.