Advancing understanding in the PV industry with solid testing in bifacial is meticulous, steady work. Every week for years, there is a standing meeting in my office, virtual or otherwise, with our all-star team geeking out on bifacial design and performance. Last week we published a seminal white paper on deep empirical testing of various 1P designs (see graph) and 1P vs 2P.
We are seeing customers using PVSyst input parameters like back-side shade factors that are wildly optimistic. Realistic factors are presented in the paper, available at https://info.nextracker.com/quantifying-your-bifacial-gains
“Our testing indicates that mono-PERC on one-in-portrait (1P) single-axis trackers provide bifacial gains of 6% under low-albedo conditions and 11% under high-albedo. These grid-connected test results are in good agreement with data from NREL and PVEL bifacial test sites.
Side-by-side test results further indicate that NX Horizon provides an additional 1.02% to 1.67% of DC-side bifacial gains as compared to other 1P single-axis tracker designs.
When using PVsyst to model bifacial gains with calibrated structure-specific inputs, we find a strong correlation between field-measured and PVsyst-modeled bifacial gains.”
Shug
