Simulation & Modeling of 3-D Solar Irradiance for Improved EV Performance

Abstract

With the recent development and success of Vehicle integrated photovoltaic (VIPV), the efficiencies and power capacities of EVs (electric vehicles) and PHVs (plugin hybrid vehicles) has extremely improved. Especially VIPV has improved the continuous charging and discharging cycles of EVs. Modern researchers are working on the development of fully solar operated vehicles. So, there is a need to re-establish meaningful practical modeling and simulation of solar irradiance for the vehicleintegrated PV, rather than an extension of the existing technology. This is a well-known fact that PV energy is directly proportional to the Solar irradiance. Once solar irradiance energy density is explored, it will help the designers of solar systems and those of the electric vehicles as well. It is also helpful to estimate solar power output of Vehicle integrated PV. It is also obvious that the solar irradiation depends on many factors, such as curvature & Orientation of the surface, solar angular position, time and date of year, geographic location, humidity, cleanliness, altitude and climate. In this work, mathematical expression is derived for an expected curved surface to estimate varying solar irradiance energy density throughout the curved surface. Although the same curved surface was simulated using the Autodesk Revit (version: 2019), the mathematical solar irradiance model was verified. The main objective of this research is to draw model for estimation of solar irradiance density on the curved metal surface so that we can predict the energy output from the EV car surface.