In light of the significance of the random characteristics of photovoltaic (PV) power generation to research on power system planning and operation involving PV

an analytic method is proposed for assessing the stochastic characteristics of PV power stations by separating the certainty and uncertainty stochastic parts of PV output time series. The global solar radiation model is adopted first to model the certainty part of the PV output

while the concept of PV output shedding factor is introduced to assess the uncertainty part of PV output to form a complete model description. By means of empirical analysis of real data of PV

the stochastic characteristics of the PV output shedding factor

in terms of the probabilistic distribution and the intermittency are investigated along with the spatial correlation of PV output.