Modeling improvements to vertical bifacial solar arrays

Vertical bifacial arrays have been investigated as a promising option for agrivoltaic applications, especially in locations with high latitudes and large diffuse light fractions. However, when compared to the current standard of single-axis tracking arrays, their performance falls short. This work modeled two different methods for potential improvement to the performance of vertical bifacial solar arrays. One method looked to determine whether the antireflective coating on the cover glass of vertical bifacial solar panels should have altered thickness compared to that of fixed-tilt or tracking panels to account for the difference in incident light angles experienced. While a small difference was found, it was not significant enough to justify the production of unique coatings specific to vertical bifacial arrays. The second method modeled the addition of a small degree of tilting in the morning and afternoon, converting a vertical bifacial array into a new design referred to as a tilting near-vertical bifacial (TNVBF) array. This array design was modeled using two different computational methods: PVWatts and Python using the pvlib code library. For tilt angles of +/- 30 degrees, PVWatts predicted an AC output increase of 16.76% while the pvlib Python library predicted an AC output increase of 21.51%.