Analysis of the Impact of Installation Parameters and System Size on Bifacial Gain and Energy Yield of PV Systems

Conference · Mon Nov 05 04:00:00 EST 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/PVSC.2017.8366690· OSTI ID:1514832

Asgharzadeh, Amir ^[1]; Lubenow, Tomas ^[1]; Sink, Joseph ^[1]; Marion, William F ^[2]; Deline, Christopher A ^[2]; Hansen, Clifford ^[3]; Stein, Joshua ^[3]; Toor, Fatima ^[1]

---

1. University of Iowa
2. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
3. Sandia National Laboratories

In this work, we present the combined effect of installation parameters (tilt angle, height above ground, and albedo) on the bifacial gain and energy yield of three photovoltaic (PV) system configurations: a single module, a row of five modules, and five rows of five modules utilizing RADIANCE based ray tracing model. We show that optimum tilt angle is dependent on parameters such as height, albedo, size of the system, and time of the year. For a single bifacial module installed in Albuquerque, NM, the optimum tilt angle is lowest (~5 degree) for summer solstice and highest (~65 degree) for winter solstice. For larger systems, optimum tilt angle can be up to 200 more than that for a single module system. We also show that modules in large scale systems, generate lower energy due to large shadowing areas cast by the modules on the ground. For albedo of 21 %, middle module in a large array generates up to 7% less energy than a single bifacial module. To validate our model, we utilize measured data from Sandia's fixed tilt bifacial PV testbed and compare it with our simulations. We find that due to higher non-uniformity, lower tilt angles demonstrate high normalized root mean square deviation (NRMSD) between measured and simulated values than high tilt angles.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1514832
• Report Number(s): NREL/CP-5K00-73942
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION
PERC
high efficiency
mono