Recording and presentations: Optimize your bifacial PV tracker project to deliver extra energy gains
8 July 2020
Sponsor of the RE.Learn Program
Media partners:
Automated transcription (it may contain errors)
Unknown Speaker 0:22
Good morning, good afternoon depending on where you are. If you have come here to watch a webinar on optimizing your bifacial Pv tracker project to the VA extra energy gains, you have come to the right place. We’re not starting quite yet, but we will. We’ll wait for a couple of minutes so everyone can join even those of you who might be running a little bit late, but stay stay with us. We’ll start shortly. THE MEANTIME at I do remind you that we will we are recording the session. And we’ll send it to you probably early next week, and you will also get a copy of the slides. So
Unknown Speaker 1:15
yeah, don’t worry about it.
Unknown Speaker 1:17
You know, we I know I’ll get this question again during the webinar, but it’s always good to remind to remind you. And well, if you have been to one of our webinars before, you know that you can ask questions as well. So, you know, if it’s your first time, take some time to look at the toolbar, which is at the bottom of the screen, and there you can see the q&a box and you can pose your questions to our experts. So it’s a good opportunity. Right, so we’ll wait for another minute or so and then we’ll get started. Just bear with us.
Unknown Speaker 2:45
And we have a almost a tradition here at Ada insights when we joined what we asked everyone do go to the chat box and say where they are connecting from so I’m here in Madrid in Spain, with my colleague Ella, Sally who is behind the scenes you can’t see her but she’s, she’s there, making sure that everything goes well. So yeah, if you go to the chat box and let us know where you are connecting from.
Unknown Speaker 3:24
We’ll wait for another minute and then we’ll get started with
Unknown Speaker 3:28
the webinar. All right,
Unknown Speaker 3:51
well, now it is time to start. So welcome everyone to the webinar. Optimize your bifacial Pv tracker project to Deliver extra gain energy gains. So today we’ll have three experts who will let us know how you could best design and set up your project, your bifacial Pv project to deliver extra gains. So, as a reminder, we will be recording the session and we’ll send you the recording and the slides as well early next week. In the meantime, when I get the experts to present themselves, so how are you out? Tamayo if you could say, a couple of sentences who you are.
Unknown Speaker 4:44
Yeah. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is My name is Javier Tamayo. I’m from the engineering department here in St. Norland. And I’m connected indeed. From the headquarters here in In the north of Spain in Barcelona,
Unknown Speaker 5:05
thank you very much. Javier. Raja, could you tell us very briefly who you are? And
Unknown Speaker 5:13
yeah, my name is a fine. I’m the head of project finance asset, especially when I’m in Banco Sabadell. And I’m connected from Barcelona and for those who don’t know us by casada is one of the leading bank internal walls in Spain. And we are now one of the market leader in the merchant financing in in Spain but because we have presence in UK, France, Mexico, us and Latin.
Unknown Speaker 5:42
Thank you very much Raja. And then last but not least, Javier vas if you
Unknown Speaker 5:48
could. briefly introduce yourself.
Unknown Speaker 5:52
Hello everyone. My name is Kabir via him and I work from for the net which is the Spanish National Renewable Energy Center and I’m here connected from from Pamplona as well, from the north of Spain.
Unknown Speaker 6:10
Thank you very much happy so well, you’ll be the first one to speak. So if you could start sharing your screen, and well, in the meantime, I can see that quite a lot of people have just come into the room so we will even see your first time you know that we’ll we’ll do the first person presentations first, and then we’ll have a questions and answers session. So you can go to the q&a box and pose your question wills. Javier and the other presenters are delivering the presentation. So well, over to you heavier.
Unknown Speaker 6:57
You’re on mute By the way, so I can’t hear you Sorry,
Unknown Speaker 7:05
better now. Thank you very much Carlos and thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk here in this webinar. Well, we are going to talk about the facial Av. So, we facial TV as our first introduction before should be installed that installations are the future but also the present of the baby industry. There are hot topic in the in this industry
Unknown Speaker 7:36
and
Unknown Speaker 7:38
reviewing see the these are a couple of graphs from the International Technology Roadmap, bb isru. From 2020. We can see a clear trend in the bifacial sell products production in the body facial module production which is actually Gaining gaining gaining market in the in the PV industry. So, we have Center also have interest in doing some research and development here in this in this field. So, we have developed our own experimental pea plant. So, we have some fixed structures some trackers, meteorological station we can modify the the mounting of the modules we can modify the albida also do we are doing some some research and development on this topic. So, in any kind of baby installation, the target is to increase the energy generation. So, we have some PV modules we have a specific location we have a support support instructor and in every In a PV installation, what is important is to perform a good design to increase that energy generation. So, we have to look at different PV generator aspects. Some of them are related to the location for example, the methodology kind of conditions, for example, that arraign orography for example, there will be though, for example, the soil in that may happen more or less depending on the situation of the period plan. Some of the aspects are related to PV modules. For example, the bifacial factor in case of beneficial models are usually the temperature coefficients of those models that are mismatch that happen that can happen between the cells inside the modules and between the modules inside the PV string. Some of the aspects are related to the support constructor for example, the PV modules elevation above the floor And the back Salah when that can cause that can be caused by the support instructor or the bits between the instructors. And we can consider also other other conditions like other specific requirements because there are many many kinds of PV installation so in some of them that can be happened some specific requirements. And we have to combine everything all together to do a very good PV generator design. In this presentation, I’m going to talk only about to increase the energy generator I’m not going to comment anything about economic part of the of the of the design. So, we can start from a PV module from the B model characteristics. Next, we have to decide a type of support instructor that can be for example, fix a fetal brain or a problem. In system then we have to take care about the supporting structure of mechanical design in the case of by facial modules, it’s important to to try to avoid or to try to minimize the, the saddles in the rear part. Then we have to, to think about the operating conditions of the supporting structures. Sometimes, for example, it is needed to modify the tracking algorithm of the of the tracker in order to increase the energy generated at some times of the day it may happen depending on the on the conditions and it’s important as well to take care of the electrical connection. Usually in bifacial installation, the current levels are higher. So, the serious resistance can be higher as well. And finally, there are some software’s that are ready Have some some tools regarding by facial modules my facial the by facial part of the installation like baby cyst or am from from an oil which can help us to estimate the LC o v final of the of the
Unknown Speaker 12:22
of the installation.
Unknown Speaker 12:24
So, if we take a look at the bifacial PV module installations, sorry finishing module specifications, whether we can see here they’re designed mechanical properties we can see here a couple of examples from two well known manufacturers. We can see the electrical characteristic at standard this condition and Ott, but what how can I know which is the maximum power gain of each module in our installation? We have these This parameter which is called the by facility that in these two cases are 70 plus minus 5%. But how do I know how much power will I get in my bifacial Pv installations? Well, in these two cases, for example, we don’t have much information, we have another part of the specification which states that the in case you have a maximum power gain of for example 10% This will be the electrical characteristic characteristics as you will have this power of this open secret voltage. But how we do know which is the power law you will Okay, so, we I work in the PV module testing laboratory internet. I’m going to comment a little bit about how we how we measure the by facial modules. We have our standard defining the procedure to measure by facial module. First of all we do from site characterization. We Measure the IQ of the modules applying Iranians in the front sight of 1000 baht per square meter without any Iranians incident in the in the rear part. Afterwards, we do our rear side characterization we apply 1000 baht per square meter to the rear side. We calculate the by facility coefficient which is defined as their as the ratio between For example, here in the source IP with current as the associate with current in from the reo site characterization divided by the subsequent covering significant site characterization and after what we apply Iranians at the higher higher levels of higher level we measure the higher level of Iranian says, For example, we can measure simulation 100 baht per square meter or 200 baht per square meter and we have here some some points in that we can fit to a straight line and from this slope of this line is called a bi, which is the real irradiance driven our getting deal. So, I mean this is lobe is how much power I will gain in installation for every buck per square meter that is incident in in the rear side of the module. And some manufacturers are already given given the electrical parameters of attack conditions called B STC. As far as I know they have not defined in any year standard, which is 1000, which is the audience is the value that changes which means it’s a frontal era. Answer one sumption battery square meter and rear irradiance of 135 bucks per square meter that compared to the model temperature and spectral solution will be the same.
Unknown Speaker 16:12
So, which are the factors that affect the energy generation from the point of view of the module there are three different paths they radians, we know that the we have an frontal Iranians are not real Iranians the spectral distribution, their frontal Iranians will have a spectral distribution which would be more or less similar to the one similar cycle equal to the one of the of the front of the monitor installations. And we will have already read each one. Really, you’ve read the end in this case, the spectral distribution of the area of the real river audience would be dependent on the sign like like this. Probably this is kind of a second order of magnitude influence and influence in the output power. So I’m going to not talk much about this and finally the temperature condition may be affected in the for the installation conditions. regarding a branch we have the frontal irradiance that may be suddenly as the sun yamano facial installation. Yes to remark that the energy gain due to the use of the tracker depends on the latitude of the of the installation. Regarding the real real audience, we have the albedo which depends on the soil. Soil it’s more or less reflect on and its body about along the time of the day along the along the the in the year. The module elevation, the higher the leverage on above the floor, the Facial isn’t getting used in Greece that beats the longest difference the longest with facial again, then non uniformities. And they are caused by shadows in the modules installed in higher real in them in the excess of the of the tracker, they have higher real real values that have to be taken into account and sometimes they may happen real soiling but also it’s an important issue. Regarding module tempietto, we have here an equation that can model the module temperature depends on the ambient temperature on the radiance and the wind speed. And we in this in this system, these two parameters use obscene or unusual one that are minor they Depending on the model type and then on the mounting system. So, looking at this equation, the higher irradiance The higher the model temperature, although not necessarily higher in that amount of facial installations because use of zero and use one might be different Iranians non uniformities can lead to localizer heating depends on the on the non uniformity. higher elevation above the floor usually means higher wind speed, at least you know can feel so, that will mean lower temperature but it may depend on the rock, Rafi of the terrain and then different different parameters. And the model temperature is related to the maximum power through the maximum power temperature coefficient, which in these models is about minus one Point 35 minute Roy Melbourne 40% of degree. So, as their conclusions there is actually a growing trend for life hlp installation the complexities are much higher than in one of Asian installations. We have commented some parameters for the facial module characterization like the by functionality or the
Unknown Speaker 20:23
BI phi.
Unknown Speaker 20:26
And we have commented some of the many factors to be considered on the project design like the albedo modulation pitch non uniformities. So, thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 20:40
Thank you very much have you had for your presentation. Next we’ll have a the next a VM, which is how we measure we’ll be delivering a presentation the meantime, I’d like to remind you that you can ask questions so I can see that you’re being quiet you varying the audience will be quite shy but no go and ask questions is your, your chance we’ll go through some of them at the end of the presentation. So how many of you have a your slides if you’d like to start sharing your screen?
Unknown Speaker 21:24
your microphone is awesome. Okay, perfect. Well, over to you.
Unknown Speaker 21:29
Okay, so good afternoon everyone. In my part I will get into detail about buy facility and how STI has upgraded its tracker. It’s solid tracker to this new train of photovoltaic modules. Well, here we see a list. In the past two years or so, we have developed a lot of projects with with this new module and if we gather them all which Among more than a Giga watt of power peak production. So the question is how the facility works in select trackers? Well, what we see is that there are three main parameters that are very important, which are the radians, the albedo and the view factor. The point is that the first two are already defined for its specific project. So maybe we could invest to improve it. The albedo, the albedo case, but we guess that the common way is to assume a natural value of value that my might change throughout the year. And to presume that that value is going to be been painted throughout all the lifetime of the photovoltaic plant. So the point is what that we see the view factor as the key point Whereas solid tracker we can assess the suitability or not to produce that profit that the festival gained that this new type of model is is suffering. So, how do we find that the factor? Well, we need to study how the radians is reflecting the ground and capturing by my collector. So, step one, we know that reflection is a diffuse phenomena, so is followed by the lumbers crossing low and depending on where do I locate my collector my collecting resurface in respect to the ground to the reflecting surface, it will have more efficiency or less. So as we see in those blue line graphs decided theory theoretical the factor or However, especially tracker in two different degrees of rotation in civil degrees and 45 degrees, step two, we have to adjust that the factor in terms of how my collecting surface is facing the the reflecting surface the ground. So, depending on how much perpendicular to the ground does my surface look like the ground, it will have more or less efficient in order to capture that reflecting Iranians and step three, which might be the most important one, we have to put that new factor into scale to proportionally increase the view factor depends on if I am considering the shaded part of the of the ground of I am considering the sunlight barrier of the of the ground. So, at the end, we get aggressive Like the one we see in orange color, which is very similar to those that the software such as policies shows in the in the bifacial procedure.
Unknown Speaker 25:12
Okay, so
Unknown Speaker 25:15
that’s basically what we have done in this analysis, we have defined both our collecting surface and also the ground surface, we have been divided both into 12 equal parts. And by geometrically, calculus, we have defined how much percent of irradiance each of my cells, each of my photovoltaic cells is capturing. At the end, we sum up the race impacting in each of myself and I can plot the total percentage of irradiance that is, its cell is capturing by the difference the difference of that a percentage can also define another parameter that we will see later, which is the mismatches as Javier has mentioned before and finally in in blue line we see we can consider also the sake of the dark view which affects to the intermediate cells with because the torque at you is in the middle of the of my trucker and we will see also some of the values we have defined later Okay. So, in order to assess different types of trucker we have considered another parameter which is the normalizes, hey, that is the ratio between the mighty collector haIf and my collector wife. So, as we see here on the table, no matter what what is my the size of my trucker, the values of The view factor keeps the same. What’s the point? The point is that that in the real market, the two most common truckers are located in different ranges. So as we tried to highlight here, they want the configuration stance in at point 75 are normally say, hey, and we’d have to factor point 1450 145 and the two p configuration, Stacy 9.6 value of normalization, hey, we have you factor or point 137. Here, we try to highlight the same idea. In the left hand side of the screen. We see three different trackers even on the allistic one, which is the three portrait configuration. And as we see our table, our collecting surface, gets wider but so that’s my pitch. My pitch is larger. So at the end, geometrically speaking, we capture the same percentage of irradiance. What’s the real case scenario? Well, on the right hand side of the screen, we see both one P and two p configuration trackers, where where we can see that that triangle that amplitude in that orange is lost by my two p collector because of that location in a lower in a lower range.
Unknown Speaker 28:35
As we spoke before,
Unknown Speaker 28:37
drivability related to the reduction in percentage of ingredients capture, we can analyze the mismatch, and we see that this parameter decreases with the normal ICP because it’s logical that the farther my collecting surface is for my immediate surface, which is the ground, the more uniform Capture irradiance will be throughout those 12 cells in this case, we have also calculate the shaving factor with most of them is on the part is the target tooth is the element that makes the the higher shake. And as we see here, it increases with the normalize aka. Well, this might not be that intuitive, but we have to take we must take into consideration that the higher my truck race, the higher the differential gang will be. So at the end, the affection of saving factors might be taking into account assuming that value of of the partial gain here as well as we know reflection is a diffuse phenomena. So no matter in in this specific case A rotation pseudo degrees right which is the most beneficial gain we have no matter if we have intermediate gap in between the modules in the chupi configuration at the end, the same produced by my torque tube will will eventually impact on my on the rear side of my module. Okay, and at the end of the process, we have, eventually design define what has been the de facto game, we have considered the B factor also the saving factor also the Newsmax and then we can plot the fact again that logically it increases with my normal says hey, and as we see in the common tracker we have in the market it’s around 7% 8% for those common values of albedo, which are around volume 25
Unknown Speaker 30:57
Here we go.
Unknown Speaker 31:00
Graph summarizing all these four elements, and as we see, the higher the normalized a paper is the more fidelity gain we will achieve. So, the question now is it by facility rewards greater value of that parameter? Where do we reach the optimum point, because as we see here, the D factor improves. And also, we have like 4% more off capture irradiance by growing my trucker for example, from Fernando molasses head of point 75 to a normality of 1.5. Well, as we know for solar investments, it’s very important to take a lot of concepts into account not only energy return, but also installation, mundane and some So on. And at the end, what SDI offers to the facility market is a dual road trucker in a one peak configuration with a model haIf around 1.5 meters and a total length around 75 meters. Because 65 sorry, meters because of that last higher dimensional thing in current models, right. So this has been my presentation so far, I hope you find it. Interesting.
Unknown Speaker 32:38
Thank you very much for your presentation. I can see that there are a lot of questions coming in. So keep them sending the questions if you need you have any event Have any of you could please stop sharing your screen so Roger can deliver hate presentation. There we go. Roger on over. Did you will to get ready I’d like to remind everyone in the audience that we are going to send you the video recording and the slides as well.
Unknown Speaker 33:11
So perfect. I’m going to share a presentation but I’m going to be fairly quick because to leave time to the to the questions, okay,
Unknown Speaker 33:21
one second.
Unknown Speaker 33:24
Well, some of you may know one consolidate has been in financing for a while since 1992. And we participate in both in obviously in financing credible are there but also we have capital markets we have a specific fund for for renewables and also in the fund for industrial just worth mentioning that are fun about 41% of SDI. Norman, so we cover all aspects in that in the runnable sector. As I mentioned earlier, We have a presence in in in Spain, UK, France, US Mexico, and Latin and in all of them. We we have been very active in in financing nanowalls especially in Spain in which we participated with a 15 gigawatts in the UK, we are also very active in Mexico. These numbers need to be updated because it is one year one a couple years older. So we are I would say a player in all these geographies and we know most of the relevant sponsors just so that you know the ones that are come from Spain, obviously, we have been very successful in matching financing. Last year, only in Spain, we signed 32 deals. And the most relevant of those, it’s that 13 of them were merchant, which five of them were were with BPA and eight of them were a world without BPA. May we take a look at the two g 2.3 g or was that we find out last year 60% were were bV and we had some of our ratios in those and 40% went from so we are one of the most specialized banking information financing granola bars. And these are some of the also we participated in in one of the one of the largest transactions in Spain and in the last couple of weeks. We also have signed very important deals in Spain. Just so that we have time for questions and then we can talk about it and how we we treat the blood the PV plant the top by facials because for the bangs and from a conservative point of view it have it raises some questions. And I think that this trend of implementing by facial in web projects it’s
Unknown Speaker 35:57
two or three years down role that we will see
Unknown Speaker 36:01
the upside in financing directly. It’s kind of difficult to assess because there are a lot of factors and, and the banks usually are fairly conservative. So when we structure the deal, we may not take the full advantage of the bifacial. But once it’s an upside for the sponsor, but I think that when we have these plants up and running in three or four years down the road in which we can assess
Unknown Speaker 36:30
the benefits,
Unknown Speaker 36:32
that then it’s when we can have a new business model based on on the track record and see that outside.
Unknown Speaker 36:45
Rest of the presentation is running off, you know that you’re off even in number one in a span in terms of number of deals, not in amount. as well. These are older people I’d fit into a functional Spain, American But what I think is relevant for these, these, these webinars is what what I just said.
Unknown Speaker 37:07
Okay, so I’m gonna
Unknown Speaker 37:10
pull down my presentation so that there is more time for questions.
Unknown Speaker 37:15
Thank you very much, Roger. And well, I think, you know, first we’ll go through some of the technical questions or they have to have been asked here and then, you know, we’d be also interesting to look at some of the financial implications of these new technology. So I can see by the type of audience we have here that they are very interested in how to measure the impact of albedo and, and configuration of a hava plant. So let’s go with the first question. So he’s by grade by khairat. And he’s asking whether we are making any progress in having common standard That’s all can follow in measuring or calculating the energy yield of bifacial modules on different science.
Unknown Speaker 38:09
Who wants to go first? Well,
Unknown Speaker 38:16
I will try to answer but, but I can’t really because well, I’m I’m related more with the module. Part I work with the module standards of IC. I’m not related as close to the, to the installation part. But I guess that for the PR calculation, you should take into account as well the real Iranians. I’m not sure exactly how long are we in standardization right.
Unknown Speaker 38:59
What else rails like to add to that.
Unknown Speaker 39:05
Are there any like tracking standards? For example, you are you’re aware of or even owned? Well, there are 100.
Unknown Speaker 39:14
Well, from SDI when we have get into details into the theoretical equations and how that all these a lot of parameters that are involved in the facility, how do we measure them, model them, but I’m not very familiar with the standards because CSR is in market and not aware of, what’s the page of that book.
Unknown Speaker 39:43
Okay, thank you. Then the next question is, was asked by Michelle, and she asked me I asked you if you have experienced an increase in the radiance, non uniformity on the radio Side caused by shading from a module frame or the structure that supports their module.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Follow us
Follow us
Follow us
ATA Insights is a website owned by:
ATA Markets Intelligence S.L.
Calle Serrano, 8, 3º izqu.
Madrid, Spain 28001
Privacy & Cookies
Política de Privacidad & Cookies
Events
Belén Gallego
belen.gallego(@)old.atainsights.com
Phone +34 686 38 94 72