Featured in Gigawatt club continues to grow – 07-2019

Pursuing a 20% bifacial boost

Research on bifacial solar panel performance has moved performance analysis closer to a standardized practice than ever before. More field tests are underway across the United States, and the first waves of data are expected this year. These tests will help standardize a predictive model for bifacial projects that is bankable.
By
Charles W. Thurston
A bifacial solar installation at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks campus. A Sandia-UAF team has found that East-West oriented vertical bifacial arrays can yield up to 20% more energy than traditional designs. | Image: Chris Pike/ ACEP

As the first round of utility-scale bifacial projects attract financing, developers, lenders, and stakeholders are concerned about energy modeling risk. At the same time, institutional experiments into enhancing albedo have begun, with the goal of raising the bifacial boost from the conservative 10% level now accepted as reliable in the industry, toward a 20% or …

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