Bifacial Solar Sensitivity to Project Capacity Size

Bifacial solar photovoltaics projects have recently seen a significant increase in installation in the US and across the world. As the solar industry gets introduced to this new technology, developers, financiers and lenders alike are trying to get comfortable with the long-term energy sustainability of bifacial modules. One of the critical areas is accurate modeling of bifacial parameters to reflect long-term P50 energy estimates. DNV GL's SolarFarmer software has the capability to model this complex physics and will be used to test distributed generation and utility scale generation outputs. There have been many studies which attempt to model bifacial systems at either a distributed generation scale (<; 5 MW) or a utility scale (>5 MW) [1], [2]. This study will attempt to compare the scalability of the bifacial model to understand if the sensitivities at different sizes of the system remain valid. It will recommend the critical parameters (height above ground, albedo, and ground coverage ratio (GCR) that developers, financers and lenders can use to optimize the energy output from their bifacial projects.