Presently, the world is undergoing exciting haste to install photovoltaic (PV) systems in industry, residential/commercial buildings, transportation, deserts, street lights, and many other applications. Solar photovoltaic energy systems are clean and reliable energy sources that are unlimited, unlike their fossil fuel counterparts. The energy market is rapidly growing globally with newly and cumulative installed capacities of about 37.6 GW and 139.6 GW, accounting for 53% and 55%, respectively, in 2017, making it one of the fastest-growing industries. The cumulative photovoltaic installations are projected to have reached 600 GW worldwide and are projected to reach 4500 GW by 2050 because of the strategies and policies of many countries. In 2021, more than three-quarters of the developed countries are now home to one solar installation. This article evaluates a critical and extensive review of the contributions of solar photovoltaic systems to national development. The approach follows all steps, starting with capturing photovoltaics on the Earth’s surface, then price reduction, load management, and socioeconomic impact of solar photovoltaic systems. From the study, it is found that the policies and strategies adopted by the leading countries, such as tax credits, capital subsidies, net-metering, VAT reduction, feed-in tariffs (FiTs), and renewable portfolio standards (RPS), have significantly helped in more installations. Additionally, the significant drop in photovoltaic module prices from 4731 $/W in 2010 to 883 $/W in 2020 has boosted the move for more installations. Based on the findings, approximately 10 million permanent employments would be put in place by advancing solar power across the globe annually.

The constant scheduled load shedding in South Africa has commonly been executed in an attempt to maintain the long aging coal power plants in the country. With the rise in the reduction of fossil fuels, efforts to eradicate environmental hazards of carbon through solar photovoltaic (PV) resources to their complete prospect are in progress. South Africa, and in particular the town Alice, acquires sunshine annually, making it appropriate to harvest solar energy. This work aims to characterize solar radiation, clearness index (Kt), and diffuse fraction (Kd) in Alice, South Africa. Hourly global and diffuse solar irradiance were estimated into monthly, seasonal, and yearly variations of Kt and Kd for the years 2017–2020. The range of values for describing the daily classification of sky condition was centered on earlier studies. The cumulative frequency and frequency distribution of daily Kt was analyzed statistically in an individual month. The analyses show that the average percentage frequency of Kt within the period is 11.72% of the cloudy days, 57% of partially cloudy days, and 31.28% of clear sky days. The findings of this research show that Alice remains a key contender for solar energy conversion location, owing to its reasonably high frequency (Kt > 0.40) of clear and partially cloudy skies. Hence, it is essential to establish energy-efficiency for energy consumption and also for daily performances.

This paper centers on the design and installation of a robust photovoltaic (PV)-based microgrid data acquisition system (DAS) that can monitor different PV systems simultaneously. The PV-based microgrid consists of three solar systems: off-grid, hybrid and grid-assisted systems, each with 3.8 kWp located at SolarWatt park, Fort Hare Institute of Technology (FHIT), South Africa. The designed DAS is achieved by assembling and connecting a set of sensors to measure and log electrical and meteorological parameters from each of the three power plants. Meteorological parameters use a CR1000 datalogger while the electrical output parameters use a DT80 data logger. Calibration was done by voltage signal conditioning which helps to reduce errors initiated by analogue signals. The designed DAS mainly assist in assessing the potential of solar energy of the microgrid power plant considering the energy needed in the remote community. Besides, the simultaneous monitoring of the three systems ensures that the outdoor operating conditions are the same while comparing the logged data. A variable day and a week, data were used to verify the reliability of the system. The back of the array temperature was observed to be 42.7 °C when solar irradiance was 1246 W/m². The ambient temperature and relative humidity were obtained at 21.3 °C and 63.3%, respectively. The PV current in all three systems increases with the solar irradiance and is highest around midday. The results obtained show that the designed DAS is of great interest in PV system developments.

The study of battery charge algorithm as a sole power storage agent in off-grid systems is essential. The battery charge algorithm has various methods, and the battery in these methods relies on the quantity of charges. Hence, a charge controller is used to safeguard and regulate battery charge and discharge for off-grid photovoltaic (PV) systems. This study presents the 11.4 kWp power plant analysis comprising three 3.8 kWp each of off-grid, hybrid and grid-assisted systems with battery capacities of 900 Ah, 1235 Ah and 910 Ah, respectively, where all the systems were reconfigured to function as off-grids. The battery charge controller charges the lead-acid battery using a three-stage charging strategy, including constant current, constant voltage and float charge stage. A DT80 data logger was installed to simultaneously record the electrical parameters of the systems, while Kipp & Zonen CMP 11 pyranometer was selected to measure solar radiation data. Experimentation with three electric bar heaters, each with fan and humidifier, were used as loads to draw constant power of 1.2 kW from batteries of each system on charging and discharging on an overcast and clear sky days for a week. The useful study is performed in the following ways, MPPT tracking performance, battery charging and discharging performance and charge controller efficiency. The performance results reveal that the MPPT can track the PV module maximum point at solar irradiance from 07h15 to around 12h00 maximum power tracking efficiency. An irradiance of illumination fluctuates from 5 W/m² to 850 W/m² while the electrical energy consumed by the loads in off-grid, hybrid and grid-assisted systems are 456.12, 568.87 and 80.00 Wh, respectively. It is estimated that individual owners could charge electric appliances from residential and commercial buildings of solar arrays of clean, renewable solar energy.

The sudden rise in population and the need to sustain natural resources have subjected many researchers to another dimension of an interesting study, such as integrating food, energy and water into a single entity. Tampering with natural resources, especially food, energy, or water, could be an aspect that hinders the requirement to meet the world’s growing city needs. The food-energy-water nexus has become even more difficult due to agricultural globalization, the essential task of which is to secure regional food and water. Therefore, the systematic literature review in this article critically investigates food interactions with energy and water optimization for sustainable development and illustrates the key points, networks, and gaps within this literature. The databases from Scopus, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect were the key retrieved data in this study from 2010 to 2024. A total of 641 research journals, book chapters and conference papers were systematically reviewed. The results based on country mapping analysis strongly favour advanced countries, for example, Germany, the United States , and the United Kingdom, recording almost more than 40% of published articles; while China, including other developing countries, record more than 5% of food-energy-water nexus research. In addition, several food-energy-water nexus articles are restricted to about one-quarter of subject categories, such as water resources, environmental sciences and green sustainable science technology. The results also depicted that the food-energy-water nexus method encourages inter-sectoral and multilevel governance, scholarly and private sector, thereby supporting the intricacies and inadequacies in attaining the sustainable development goals. The prioritization of the food-energy-water nexus approach, particularly during the incident of COVID-19, can be a complete method to sustainably exploit natural resources to support the attainment of environmental sustainability. Thus, studying the integration of food, energy and water would produce better knowledge in advancing the flexibility of natural resources and decreasing multifaceted global poverty.