An Experimental Comparison of Bifacial and Monofacial PV Modules

The interest in Bifacial PV modules has grown rapidly during the last few years. The main objective of this work is to experimentally investigate the electrical and thermal behavior of a bifacial module and to compare it with the performance of three monofacial modules (Half-cut, Mono-PERC, and Polycrystalline) under the Jordanian climate.Throughout the present work, four PV modules have been installed on the roof top of the Engineering School of the University of Jordan, with a tilt angle of 30° facing south. Several attempts have been done to design, calibrate, program, and install a complete data acquisition system that is capable of measuring all required system parameters: current, voltage, cell and ambient temperatures, and solar radiation on the front and rear sides of the panels. Measurements were conducted for five weeks. Temperature measurements for the PV modules showed that the measured temperatures are neither affected by the sensor position on the module surface nor by the module side at which it is installed. Moreover, the bifacial module temperatures were found to be similar to the temperature of other modules. From energetic point of view, the bifacial module produced 9.9%, 13.1% and 24.9% more energy compared to the Mono-PERC, Half-cut and Polycrystalline panels respectively for a period of five weeks during October and November. These results reveal that bifacial PV panels have a great potential to improve the energy production of a PV plant.