A comprehensive understanding of the performance gain offered by a bifacial module remains an elusive goal for PV owners and EPCs due to variations arising from different design, manufacturing and testing methods. Vicente Parra, Ruperto J. Gómez, José C. Vázquez and Francisco Álvarez of Enertis review the main sources of variability and outstanding uncertainties that must be addressed as the industry seeks to define standard rules for reliably selecting, purchasing and deploying bifacial PV modules
A round-up of the latest project development news from the solar industry, as Vattenfall completes its maiden floating solar project, Acciona breaks ground on a 238MWp array in Chile and one of the Middle East’s largest bifacial solar projects completes three months early.
BP has set lofty targets for its renewables ambitions, backing bifaciality and merchant revenue strategies to provide major boosts as it targets 50GW of renewable capacity by 2030.
Having launched its new Vertex range of modules, Trina Solar is pushing the technology envelope as it joins the latest in a wave of manufacturers to bring 500W+ modules to market. PV Tech spoke to Dr. Franck Zhang, head of product strategy and value management at Trina Solar, to get all the details about the technology within the module.
A round-up of the latest solar industry news from the US market, where there’s yet more M&A in the installer domain, more solar PPAs for Facebook and D. E. Shaw turns to Nextracker for fleet upgrades.
Many of the bifacial modules now offered by PV manufacturers employing bifacial passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC+) technology, making them vulnerable to rear-side potential-induced degradation, in addition to the conventional front-side shunting type (PID-s). Kai Sporleder, Volker Naumann, Stephan Großer, Marko Turek and Christian Hagendorf of the Fraunhofer Centre for Silicon Photovoltaics report on new testing methods designed to quantify the expected power losses of bifacial PERC+ modules in the field
A round-up of the latest news from Europe’s solar market, as European Energy sells off Denmark’s first solar farm built using bifacial panels and both RWE and Octopus snap up French solar assets.
