A Worldwide Cost-based Design and Optimization of Tilted Bifacial Solar Farms

TL;DR

This paper presents a global cost-based optimization framework for tilted bifacial solar farms, revealing optimal design strategies based on land and module costs to minimize LCOE and improve solar energy competitiveness.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to decouple energy yield from costs, providing design guidelines for bifacial farms considering land and module cost interactions.

Findings

Optimal panel orientation varies with land and module costs.

Tilted bifacial modules can reduce LCOE by 8-10%.

Design recommendations differ by geographic location.

Abstract

The steady decrease in the levelized cost of solar energy (LCOE) has made it increasingly cost-competitive against fossil fuels. The cost reduction is supported by a combination of material, device, and system innovations. To this end, bifacial solar farms are expected to decrease LCOE further by increasing the energy yield; but given the rapid pace of design/manufacturing innovations, a cost-inclusive optimization of bifacial solar farms has not been reported. In our worldwide study, we use a fundamentally new approach to decouple energy yield from cost considerations by parameterizing the LCOE formula in terms of "land-cost" and "module cost" to show that an interplay of these parameters defines the optimum design of bifacial farms. For ground-mounted solar panels, we observe that the panels must be oriented horizontally and packed densely for locations with high "land-cost", whereas the panels should be optimally tilted for places with high "module-cost". Compared to a monofacial farm, the modules in an optimized bifacial farm must be tilted ~15-20 degrees higher and will reduce LCOE by ~8-10% in many locations of the world. The results in this paper will guide the deployment of LCOE-minimized ground-mounted tilted bifacial farms around the world.