In December 2007, what at the time was the largest in North America, a solar voltaic power plant was activated at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, Nevada. Seventy-two 25-square-inch silicon photovoltaic solar cells, manufactured by SunTech Power Holdings of
Jiangsu Province, China, are installed on each panel. There are 12 panels mounted on 5,821 SunPower T20 single-axis sun trackers. The single-crystal solar cells have front-side metallization and a back-side oxide passivation layer to minimize unwanted hole-electron recombination. A sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 24.2 percent is achieved. a) Calculate the maximum DC electrical power generated by the total solar PV array. b) Fifty-two Xantrex GT250 three-phase DC-AC inverters with 96% efficiency are used to convert the output to AC at 60 Hz. Compute the output power due to maximum sunlight. c) The ratio of average to peak power generated is called the capacity factor. For the Nellis
Plant this factor is 22%. Calculate the annual average generation of AC energy output from the Nellis solar power plant. d) If it costs $500,000 per year to amortize the construction, perform maintenance and operate the Nellis plant, compute the nonprofit electricity rate to be billed to the user in cents per kilowatt-hour used. e) If the nominal AC 3? output line-to-line voltage is 480 Vac rms, and the nominal line
current is 300 A rms, calculate the nominal average AC output power from each inverter and also calculate the total AC output power from the plant. f) For the inverter AC output power found in part (e) and an inverter DC input current of 540 amperes, compute the DC voltage input to each inverter.