Tracker Terrain Loss Part Two

Trackers on variable terrain can incur electric mismatch losses from row-to-row shading even with backtracking. Tracker terrain loss is the difference between the performance of trackers on horizontal ground and that on variable terrain. SolarFarmer was used to study tracker terrain loss by simulating the Hopewell Friends Solar power plant, which has an average 4% southwest slope. The results yielded a tracker terrain loss of −2% with standard backtracking and slope-aware backtracking completely recovered the 2% loss. By subdividing the site from one to three layouts, the tracker terrain loss decreased 0.5%. The 1-h versus 5-min input data did not significantly affect the tracker terrain loss. This study is a continuation of a previous study that prompted improvements in SolarFarmer's 3-D tracker shading algorithm. The results of this study demonstrate that SolarFarmer can now be used to calculate tracker terrain loss. A comparison of the SolarFarmer results with a separate uneven terrain model developed by DNV using PVsyst produced similar results.