A Study on the Impact of Various Meteorological Data on the Design Performance of Rooftop Solar Power Projects in Vietnam: A Case Study of Electric Power University

People are increasingly using clean energy sources, contributing to environmental protection according to the general trend of the world. In the form of renewable energy, solar energy has contributed to solving current pressing problems, such as environmental pollution and air pollution, improving people’s quality of life. The design of solar power projects in Vietnam is mainly based on meteorological data sources from Meteonorm and NASA. However, the accuracy assessment of two data sources compared to the actual solar power data in Vietnam is not available, so there is no basis to determine better meteorological data source quality to serve the design of rooftop solar power projects. The content of this paper analyzes the simulation results of a typical rooftop solar power station at the Electric Power University, Hanoi city based on meteorological data sources from Meteonorm and NASA. After that, the simulation results will be compared with the actual operating data of a rooftop solar power station near the Electric Power University and other real PV systems in the world. The study results showed that the amount of electricity production using the Meteonorm meteorological data was closer to the actual data than the NASA data source. Therefore, solar power projects in Vietnam should use Meteonorm data source for the design process to determine the best economic and technical efficiency for investors.