Realistic performance evaluation and optimal energy management of a large-scale bifacial photovoltaic system

Abstract

This paper introduces an optimal energy management and a comprehensive innovative comparison between on-grid monofacial and bifacial solar photovoltaic systems in terms of energy production, reliability, economic feasibility, ecological impact, footprint area, and other performance indicators. This is to satisfy the load demand of Al-Husainya city, Jordan. Realistic measured data are obtained from authoritative companies in Jordan. This includes ambient temperature, solar irradiance, and a utility-scale load demand. The optimal sizing and energy management strategy are achieved using Marine Predators optimization algorithm. This is done by minimizing Loss of Power Supply Probability. The decision variable is the number of photovoltaic modules. The unit investigation shows that the maximum power of the bifacial panel is increased compared with a monofacial module. So, this will highly affect system size and hence reliability, footprint required area, cost and ecological indicators are impacted too. Results show that the minimized values of the objective function of Loss of Power Supply Probability for monofacial and bifacial systems are 0.3534 % and 0.2511 %, respectively. The number of monofacial and bifacial panels are 12,940 and 11,584 respectively. In addition, the area required to install the bifacial array is decreased by 10.4791 % compared with the monofacial array. Finally, four additional optimization algorithms were used to validate and compare with the obtained results using the Marine Predators algorithm. The methodology described in this paper, which adopts the bifacial photovoltaic technology, is recommended and it can be applied anywhere to get highly reliable, feasible, and more environmentally friendly solar energy systems.