COMPARISON OF ENERGY PERFORMANCE OF VERTICAL AND TILTED BIFACIAL PV MODULES IN ARID ENVIRONMENTS

This work reports on field data results of energy performance for bifacial crystalline silicon (c-Si) photovoltaic (PV) modules in a desert climate. Energy yields of south-facing tilted (22°) and vertical (90°) E-W oriented modules were compared. The main objective is to study energy yield in real operating conditions for soiled and cleaned module and investigate bifacial module especially the vertical configuration as a soiling mitigation approach. For tilted modules, soiling losses increased with time up to 60% and 45% for monofacial and bifacial modules respectively. Generally, in average clean tilted bifacial module slightly (<5.2%) outperformed clean vertical module. However, vertical module outperformed the tilted module by up to 8% during the summer. No significant soiling losses were observed for the vertical module. The results show that bifacial PV is a natural soiling mitigator and vertical module installation is feasible and has a strong potential as a soiling mitigation strategy in desert climates.