Optimal Solar PV Module Specification Across Libya's Climate Zones: A Multi-Stress Analysis with PVsyst Cross-Validation, Integrating Thermal, Soiling, Humidity, and Wind Effects
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65421/jibas.v2i3.172Keywords:
Photovoltaic Performance, Climate Zoning, Thermal Derating, Soiling, PID Risk, Wind Cooling, Pvsyst, LibyaAbstract
Libya spans a coastal Mediterranean strip, a highland plateau, and a hyper-arid desert interior within one country, yet PV specifications are typically chosen without accounting for this diversity. This study derives three data-driven climate zones for Libya from twelve years of weather data at twelve stations, using k-means clustering of temperature, humidity, elevation, and irradiance. For each zone, thermal derating, soiling, humidity-based PID/corrosion risk, and wind effects were modeled using the Faiman cell-temperature formulation, Perez transposition, literature-derived soiling rates, and separated mean-wind cooling and extreme-gust design values. Thermal derating loss ranges from 3.39% in the coastal zone to 5.35% in the desert interior, while soiling loss at a 30-day cleaning cycle ranges from 2.70% to 8.25%. Combined heat-humidity stress hours reach 1119.8 h/yr in the coastal zone against 2.8 h/yr in the desert interior, and net specific yield differs by only 2.25% across zones under uniform 30-day cleaning but by 7.16% under a zone-appropriate schedule; to the authors' knowledge, this stress-hour contrast and cleaning-schedule impact are the first quantified evidence that Libya's climate zones differ more in maintenance and reliability requirements than in raw energy potential. Results were cross-validated against PVsyst 7.4.8 at three sites using an as-installed AIKO ABC module; PVsyst independently confirms the desert interior outproduces the coastal and highland zones despite higher losses. Findings combine into a specification matrix covering cell technology, PID mitigation, corrosion class, cleaning cycle, and wind rating, giving a practical basis for PV deployment across Libya.
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