Monitoring of bifacial floating PV systems and validation of a toolbox for its simulation

Abstract

The development of solar photovoltaic systems has seen a rapid increase in the recent years propelled by mass manufacturing and constantly declining costs of PV modules. In some regions, however, the levelized cost of energy is still rather high, posing some challenges for this technology to take a leading roll in the energy mix. In order to overcome this, two approaches are being taken by the industry. On the one hand, improvements on the PV technology itself are nabling new PV systems to achieve higher yields of energy. One of this novel echnologies is bifacial PV modules. On the other hand, some research is being done in the deployment of PV systems in alternative configurations such as floating on water. This allows countries with land limitations, such as the Netherlands, to consider PV energy as a feasible and cost effective way to supply its energy demand.
A pilot system called InnoZoWa is being developed by the water authority Rivierenland in the Netherlands. This system will evaluate the feasibility of floating bifacial PV systems in the country. At the current phase of the project a monitoring system is developed. This system serves as means of data acquisition for research purposes from a PV system that can potentially be deployed in larger areas of inland shallow water. Delft University of Technology is one of the partners involved in the development of InnoZoWa. The PVMD group from the university is in charge of the electrical specifications and data analysis. The same group has developed in recent years a toolbox for the design and simulation of PV systems. This tool must go through different validation stages. This project is an opportunity to test out the toolbox and establish its accuracy and reliability. The toolbox presents also an opportunity to simulate the outcome from the InnoZoWa study system . Therefore, the toolbox is used to reproduce the different scenarios and configurations proposed in the pilot. As a result of this simulation, it is concluded that bifacial floating systems with reflectors are the technology with the highest potential in the setup. Other configurations including tracking functionalities show an even larger potential but their self energy consumption is a concern.