Double-Sided Solar Panels That Track The Sun Could Produce 35% More Energy
Source: Scott Snowden · FORBES · | June 29, 2020
La Silla Observatory located in the Atacama Desert, Chile, uses rows of bifacial solar panels ADOBE STOCK
The concepts of both solar panels that track the sun and double-sided solar panel arrays have existed independently before now, but researchers have looked at the benefits of combining them for the first time.
A team from the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore lead by Carlos Rodríguez-Gallegos discovered that found that panels with photovoltaic cells on both sides that could also tilt to follow the sun would produce 35 percent more energy and reduce the average cost of electricity by 16 percent.
At present, solar panels around the world are predominantly installed with a fixed orientation and capture light only from one side. This means they are dependent on the sun’s position in the sky and are only able to convert about 22 percent of the light they absorb into energy.
In addition to a fixed tilt, two types of solar panel exist that can track the sun: single-axis trackers follow the sun over the course of a day, typically tilting from east to west and dual-axis trackers, which not only tilt from east to west, but also rotate 360° to follow the sun over the course of a year since the sun’s elevation is higher in summer and lower in winter.
Three types of solar panel are currently in use, fixed-tilt, and single and dual axis trackers SOLAR ENERGY RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF SINGAPORE
While there are a number of pioneering breakthroughs currently being made in solar technology, this innovation is extremely simple. The team analyzed energy generated by different solar panel configurations and together with data from NASA’s Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System and field data on global sunlight patterns from three different institutes. They found that double-sided panels – sometimes called bifacial modules – would produce 35 percent more energy when combined with single-axis trackers, and 40 percent more in combination with dual-axis trackers.