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

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.