Comparative analysis of grid-connected bifacial and standard mono-facial photovoltaic solar systems

Nor Hidayah Abdul Kahar (Universiti Kuala Lumpur British Malaysian Institute)
Nurul Hanis Azhan (Universiti Kuala Lumpur British Malaysian Institute)
Ibrahim Alhamrouni (Universiti Kuala Lumpur British Malaysian Institute)
Muhammad Nubli Zulkifli (Universiti Kuala Lumpur British Malaysian Institute)
Tole Sutikno (Universitas Ahmad Dahlan)
Awang Jusoh (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia)

Bulletin of Electrical Engineering and Informatics
Vol 12, No 4: August 2023

This paper describes the design of a solar photovoltaic (PV) system using simulation of PVsyst software. This work involves the simulation of bifacial and mono-facial PV solar in a large-scale solar system. For a bifacial system, the yearly total energy to the grid is 1699.6 MWh, with an average of 4.57 kWh/kWp/day. For a mono-facial system, the total energy to the grid over the year is 1645.3 MWh, with an average of 4.05 kWh/kWp/day. The average collection losses obtained for bifacial and mono-facial modules were 0.33 kWh/kWp/day and 0.82 kWh/kWp/day, respectively, with system losses of 0.15 kWh/kWp/day (bifacial) and 0.18 kWh/kWp/day (mono-facial). The average performance ratio for bifacial and mono-facial was 0.904 and 0.801, respectively. The bifacial PV system was able to generate profit in terms of Return on investment (ROI), around 357%, and reach a breakeven around 7 years. The payback period for a mono-facial PV system was around 8.1 years, with an ROI of 290.4%. This work mainly focuses on a comparative analysis of bifacial and mono-facial photovoltaics, emphasizing the effectiveness and the implementation suitability of bifacial photovoltaics over mono-facial PV solar systems.