Thermal comparison of floating bifacial and monofacial photovoltaic modules considering two laying configurations

The overall performance of PV modules is significantly affected by the design configuration, especially the bifacial module technology over the conventional monofacial ones. In land-based PV installation, the configuration of the PV array is usually subject to the area available. However, for the floating PV system (FPV), the area doesn't constrain the installation design. The presence of a water surface has a key impact on the operating status of the FPV module; nevertheless, installing the module in different configurations as landscape or portrait, can effectively influence the thermal behaviour of the module and thus the overall performance. Hence, this paper aims to analyse experimentally the performance of the FPV system installed in landscape configuration (L-FPV) and portrait configuration (P-FPV). Additionally, for a deeper evaluation, both bifacial and monofacial modules are investigated under the different mentioned configurations. The experimental setup consists of two sets of orientations, each having a typical rated power of different module technologies (monofacial/bifacial) available in “Enel Innovation Lab” in Catania (Italy). Measurements of seven months have been investigated for performance evaluation. The outcomes of this research revealed that for the same module technology, landscape configuration has a lower temperature compared to portrait configuration by around 1 ° C for the bifacial modules and 1.71 ° C for the monofacial modules. This led to a favorable daily array yield improvement by 3 % for the bifacial technology and 2.8 % for the monofacial one. Furthermore, thermal modeling is performed through coefficients optimization of thermal models for different module technologies and layouts for floating systems. • The impact of landscape vs. portrait configuration on FPV system performance is examined. • Installing floating PV in landscape configuration facilitated better cooling for bifacial. • A floating monofacial module in a portrait configuration has the highest temperature. • Thermal modeling of mono/bifacial FPV modules in various configurations is introduced. • The bifacial gain was 1.72 % for landscape and 2.38 % for portrait configurations.