**3. PV Plant Model**

There are several modeling techniques that can be used to estimate maximum power generation from a PV plant, such as single diode circuital model [17], double diode circuital model [18], artificial neural networks [19] and analytic model [20]. An analytical modeling method was considered to estimate power loss due to clipping in a grid-tied PV plant.

To validate the model, one year of data (Figure 2) were compared to the power predicted by the model. Clipped DC power in kW, irradiance in kW/m2, module temperature in ◦K measurements and PV module data sheet parameters were available. Uniform irradiance and temperature conditions among PV modules were considered to estimate the output power. A description of the analytical modeling method and a quantitative comparison, with the empiric data, is given below.
