Modeling of Incident Solar Energy on Bifacial Solar Collectors

Bifacial solar is a promising technology in solar energy that has the potential to increase the amount of power a single solar panel can generate by allowing light to be collected on both sides of the module. Understanding how best to use these bifacial solar collectors is non-trivial as many factors go into the mounting geometry and these tend to be interrelated, requiring a case-by-case analysis. Reflectors can be used to shine more light onto the back of panels increasing their power output, making the geometry more complicated. The development of a model that can take the characteristics of a certain mounting location and determine the best bifacial mounting arrangement would therefore be helpful. This study presents a model for determining the incident energy on both sides of a bifacial collector. The model is able to analyze the use of reflectors and of spacing of rows in solar farms. These capabilities were demonstrated by simulating a bifacial panel mounted vertically with a vertical reflector behind it. Some experimental verification of the shading model has been performed with promising results. Otherwise results follow expected qualitative trends, but further experimental verification is in order. The hope is that this model can be applied to optimizing bifacial panel mountings in future studies.