The Characteristics of a Photovoltaic System in a Cold District. (Third report)

Recently, the application area for photovoltaic systems has expanded from special purpose usage to the more general field in our everyday lives. In Hokkaido, we are also able to see some applied examples of photovoltaic systems in such fields as traffic lights or lighting facilities, and for geographical reasons, an independent power generation systems for a thinly populated region is now under consideration. A refrigerator is considered to be the main system load when a photovoltaic system is used as a household power source. In this paper, we study some characteristics of our natural energy laboratory’s 480 Wp photovoltaic system which includes a refrigerator as the system’s load and discuss the appropriate power capacity for a photovoltaic system for household usage in a cold district. Furthermore, we study the effective utilization of sun-light reflected from snow covered surfaces which is considered one of the characteristics of a snowy and cold district. The quantitative relation between the amount of the reflected sun-light and the power output of a photovoltaic system is also studie