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Researchers in Canada’s national capital have devised a smart approach to optimize the effectiveness of solar panels by enhancing them with artificial ground reflectors.
The University of Ottawa’s SUNLAB, led by electrical engineering Professor Karin Hinzer, collaborated with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, to study how reflective ground covers affect solar energy output.
The research was conducted by uOttawa electrical engineering doctoral candidate Mandy Lewis in Golden, and it found that placing reflective surfaces under solar panels can increase their energy output by up to 4.5%. It involved pairing high ground reflectivity with bifacial solar modules, paired with high ground reflectivity.
In an interview with EE Times, Lewis said solar power can be some of the cheapest power in the world, especially in sun drenched regions, such as Saudi Arabia or Quatar. But other countries like the United States and Canada have different weather patterns.
By Shanghai Yongming Electronic Co.,Ltd 05.30.2024
By MRPeasy 05.01.2024
Lewis said the research findings are particularly significant in Canada, where snow cover persists for three to four months of the year in major cities like Ottawa and Toronto, and 65% of the country’s vast landmass experiences snow cover for over half the year. Additionally, given that approximately 4% of the world’s land areas are classified as sandy deserts, this finding has global applications, she said.
Hinzer said that even in regions with more intermittent bouts of sunshine can benefit from solar power as the cost of batteries to store the collected energy has dropped dramatically in the last few years. The overall cost of solar power systems is down, she added, which means an especially sunny region can depend solely on solar as its single source of power. “It’s quite reliable these days.”
The efficiency of most solar panels ranges from 20% to 25%, and panel materials have evolved in the last five to 10 years from aluminum back surface field to passivated emitter and rear contact (PERC), which is much more efficient with only minor changes to the manufacturing process, Lewis said. “All they had to do is add a couple of process steps to get this huge increase in efficiency.”
PERC cells can be made bifacial more easily, which has facilitated the production of bifacial modules globally. Bifacial solar modules went from less than 10% of world market share in 2018 to 35% today, with bifacial modules expected to increase to 70% of world market share by 2033, according to an International Technology Roadmap for Photovoltaic (ITRPV) report released in April 2023. (The SUNLAB researchers used studied PERC bifacial modules paired with reflectors.)
There are technologies and configurations on the horizon that offer better energy yield than PERC on the horizon, Lewis added. “We’ve seen a move from mono facial solar panels, which absorb light on one side, to bifacial, which absorb light on both sides,” she said. “Most new installations are bifacial.”
Lewis said there is a great deal of interest in further producing more energy by increasing the ground reflectivity of the site because it results in more rear incident irradiance, which means more electricity that can be sold to the grid. “There’s been a few studies of different types of reflector materials,” she said.
The SUNLAB study at NREL site looked at the effect of high albedo (70% reflective) artificial reflectors on single-axis-tracked bifacial photovoltaic systems through ray-trace modeling and field measurements. The researchers tested a range of reflector configurations by varying reflector size and placement and demonstrated that reflectors increased daily energy yield up to 6.2% relative to natural albedo for PERC modules.
The researchers modeled a typical meteorological year in Golden to demonstrate the effects of artificial reflectors under a wide range of operating conditions using different placements. If cost was an issue, that might limit the ability to cover the entire ground. However, the researchers looked at only a subset of the ground and how placement could be optimized. “You don’t need to cover the whole ground,” Hinzer said.
In both modeling and field tests—and for all locations—the ideal placement of the reflectors was found to be directly underneath the module due to the optimized rear irradiance increase. Lewis said the goal is to increase incident radiance and increase module efficiency. “Both of those things will give you more power output.”
Lewis said she is looking to broaden the parameter space of the analysis by adding more locations, configurations and panel design types. “It would be interesting to see whether globally, the same solution is best, or if there are regional solutions that are better.”
The SUNLAB study marks the beginning of a new international research collaboration between the University of Ottawa and NREL. The project was funded by the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE).
The study “Artificial Ground Reflector Size and Position Effects on Energy Yield and Economics of Single Axis Tracked Bifacial Photovoltaics” was published in the “Progress in Photovoltaics” journal.
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