pv magazine Webinar | View-factor vs. ray tracing – which bifacial modelling techniques should you use?

Initiative partner: Soltec

When modeling a bifacial plus single-axis tracking site, yield predictions tend to be a few percentage points off what the real output is once the site is built and commissioned. Already an offset of 5% can have severe effects on a project’s finances, as the expected generation capacity, of course, determines the tariff at which electricity is sold. Aside from determining the right tariffs, inaccurate generation predictions will also have adverse effects on the plant’s performance. Bifacial gains are most pronounced during midday operations of a plant, meaning that the power plants peak power is increasing, while in the morning and evenings, bifacial modules don’t increase yield. That means that plant designers need to change AC/DC-ration to avoid premature inverter clipping but still ensure that the site is running at its highest efficiency.

Our pv magazine webinar partner, Soltec, has logged in 12 months of testing in its Bifacial Tracker Evaluation Center Center and José Alfonso Teruel, CTO at Soltec Innovations will share some of the key findings in this webinar. Aside from news about AC/DC-ratio practices, also joining the webinar is NREL’s Bifacial PV Analyst, Silvana Ayala Pelaéz, who will provide her insights into the two methodologies to calculate rear-side irradiance. One is the view-factor model, which assumes an isotropic scattering of reflected rays. This model is used by PVsyst or SAM, for example. On the other side, ray-tracing models simulate multipath reflection and absorption of individual rays entering a scene. Ray-tracing software such as bifacial radiance offers the possibility of reproducing complex scenes. There is some degree of deviation in the prediction when both approaches are compared.

Join our webinar to learn more about different methodologies to accurately calculate rear-side gains from bifacial tracking sites. And how to adjust inverter capacity to ensure smooth and efficient operation of the site.

Webinar content:
• Results of year evaluations at BiTEC
• Comparison between 1P and 2P solar trackers
• Implementing factors of trackers to achieve better results in PVsyst simulations and influence factors for Bifacial Gain
• AC/DC ratio in bifacial tracking arrays

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This webinar was recorded on 18 December 2019.