Sandia National Laboratories' continued work with bifacial PV modules has found discrepancies in the capability of bifacial PVmodules to generate energy depending on systemdesign. We have also found significant nonuniformity in rear-side irradiance across strings of bifacial PV modules, thus creating electrical mismatch between modules. Module level power electronics (MLPE) that track the maximum power point of each module alleviate some of theelectrical mismatch caused by nonuniform rear-side irradiance on bifacial PV modules. The bifacial gain of the bifacial PV modules can be increased significantly through MLPE, although the net energy gain may not be significant forunshaded bifacial PV systems. Here we present the results of a test between bifacial PV systems equipped with MLPE and the same systems without MLPE.
The key objectives of this project were to increase meaningful stakeholder engagement in photovoltaic performance modeling and reliability areas. We did this by hosting six workshop over the past three years, giving conference and workshop presentations and contributing to technical standards committees. Our efforts have made positive contributions by increasing the sharing of information and best practices and by creating and sustaining a technical community in PV Performance Modeling. This community has worked together over the past three years and has improved its practice and decreased performance modeling uncertainties.
This project has three main objectives: (1) to field and collect performance data from bifacial PV systems and share this information with the stakeholder community; (2) to develop and validate bifacial performance models and deployment guides that will allow users to accurately predict and assess the use of bifacial PV as compared with monofacial technologies and (3) to help develop international power rating standards for bifacial PV modules.