Panel Type and Tracking Configuration Based Performance Evaluation of Solar Photovoltaic System

Abstract The usage of various forms of renewable energy has increased over the past few decades to help fulfill the fast rising worldwide demand for energy. Solar has been deemed the most promising of these renewable energy sources according to recent studies. The solar photovoltaic (SPV) system is the most promising technology to capture solar energy. For effective implementation of the SPV system, the performance of the system has been evaluated for specific site. This paper evaluates the performance of various panel types (mainly monofacial and bifacial panel) as well as different tracking configurations (especially fixed axis, single axis, and double axis tracking) in the SPV system. Regarding this, the geographical site (Kajra, India) having latitude (25.1271° N) and longitude (86.2069° E), has been taken to examine the performance of grid connected SPV system (5 kWp) using system advisor model (SAM). The results show that the SPV system having bifacial panels injects more energy (8224 kWh/year) than monofacial panels (7732 kWh/year) considering fixed axis tracking. In terms of different tracking configuration, the double axis tracking injects more energy (10114 kWh/year) than both fixed axis (8224 kWh/year) and single axis (9183 kWh/year). The results also show that bifacial panels and double axis tracking incorporated SPV system has highest value of energy yield, capacity factor and performance ratio. Keywords- Solar tracking configurations, Bifacial panels, Array energy, Grid energy, Energy yield, Capacity factor, Performance ratio