Simulation of Electrical Losses in Bifacial PV and Validation with Real Vertical System in Germany

There has been significant progress in the simulation of bifacial photovoltaic (PV) systems in the past. Despite this, the electrical losses of bifacial PV systems have yet to be thoroughly investigated in terms of simulation. This study focuses on the cables and the inverters by quantifying and validating the electrical losses caused by the resistivity of the wires and the efficiency of the inverters. For the simulation, a script is implemented into the code of BifacialSimu [1]. Furthermore, individual monthly simulations were compared with data measured from a PV plant in southern Germany and with simulations made in PVsyst [2] to validate their accuracy. On average, the simulation for the cable losses was 0.137% in BifacialSimu and 0.135% in PVsyst for the months in consideration. On the other hand, the average simulated losses for the inverter were 2.07%, while the losses measured on-site were 2.09%. These results demonstrate the high accuracy of the models applied.