Country: Italy

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Description: Ingegneria e Ricerca S.p.A (EII) manages for Enel S.p.A all the engineering processes relevant to the design and construction of power plants as well as research studies devoted to requirements of Enel Group and third parties. Enel Ingegneria e Ricerca S.p.A. participates to the Sophia project through its Advanced Solar PV Laboratory one of test site of its Research Area. The PV laboratory is located in Catania and is the Enel site devoted to the analysis, qualification and modeling of PV technologies. The laboratory has a total area of 10 hectares and thanks to its optimal weather conditions and exposure to the sun, allows all year round field evaluations of innovative cells, modules and photovoltaic systems such as combined systems using crystalline silicon cells as high efficiency active devices and multi-junction cells, or thin film photovoltaic systems.

Research Fields:

  • Power Electronics & Inverters
  • PV Systems
  • Wind Systems
  • Storage Systems
  • Comm. Tech. & Smart Metering
  • Electrical Vehicles
  • System Security and Reliability
  • Smart Buildings

 

Facilities:

Climatic Chambers

Description: Climatic Chambers for ageing tests The ageing laboratory is equipped with four environmental rooms able to perform on PV modules accelerated ageing tests by the simulation of atmospheric agents
CPV modules outdoor test station
Description: The CPV modules outdoor test facility started its operation since Summer 2009. The Outdoor test station is located at the ENEL Advanced Solar Laboratory in Catania, Sicily, Italy (Lat. 37,5° N, Long. 15,15° E). Thanks to the optimal irradiation conditions of the site (DNI equal to 1820 kWh/m2/year and DHI equal to 20% of the global horizontal solar radiation), it represents a suitable location to test different kind of CPV modules. The test station allows to take experimental data (e.g. power rating, I-V curves) on CPV modules under real operating conditions in order to define their energy performance. CPVs characterisation is carried out in relationship with the meteorological data continuously monitored by meteo radiometric sensors.
Static Equipment
Dedicated small two axis tracking bench

Description: Equipped for the measurement of Direct Normal Irradiance, Horizontal Global irradiance, horizontal diffuse irradiance, U-V irradiance (pyreliometer, pyranometers, U-V radiometers).
Dual axis tracking bench

Description: Tracking accuracy: +/- 0,3 °
I-V tracer unit with MPPT function
Mobile Equipment
Description: Reference cells and relevant temperature transducers

 

Description: Electric loads (Ranging from 10 V to 660 V, 100 W to 3 kW)

CPV systems long term monitoring station

Description: Long and short term monitoring of CPV grid-connected systems started in October 2007. The test station is located at the ENEL Advanced Solar Laboratory in Catania, Sicily, Italy. In the laboratory, CPV grid connected systems are currently under testing. Two of them are HCPV ( 700 X and 1000 X ) with MJ cells, the third one is a low concentrating PV system with high efficiency silicon cells (20 X). Monitoring allows the determination of plants operation reliability and energy performance in real operating conditions.

Outdoor test lab for PV flat modules

Description: The Outdoor test station for PV flat modules is located in a large area of the ENEL Advanced Solar Laboratory. The test site is Catania, Sicily, Italy (Lat. 37,5° N, Long. 15° E). Due to the optimal irradiation conditions of the site, DNI equal to 1803 kWh/m2 per year, the Outdoor test station is one of the main infrastructure of ENEL Advanced Solar Laboratory for testing on different kind of PV flat modules. It permits the analysis in parallel of up to 24 flat modules, positioned in benches opportunely oriented toward the south direction depending on the month of the year.
Static Equipment
Data acquisition system

I-V testers

Description: Tracing of I-V curve of a single module.
Multi-channel I-V tester

Description: Testing on six PV flat modules in parallel.
Solar Simulators
Description: Enel has class A sun simulators according to IEC 60904-9 standard for power rating test on flat PV cells and modules.

last updated: 07.02.2018

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