Influence of the Albedo on Agrivoltaics Electricity Production

Abstract

This paper aims to quantify to what extent the electricity production of two types of agrivoltaics installations (fixed vertical bifacial and horizontal single axis tracker) is affected by the installation of different ground cloths. In order to assess the potential benefits of the use of these cloths, a series of ray-tracing simulations and an extensive measurement campaign were conducted. For the fixed vertical bifacial system, the simulations showed that the white ground cloth should result in an average increase in incident irradiance of about 8% for simulated periods occurring in both March (+8.2%) and June (+7.3%). However, measurements on the vertical bifacial setup over a period of 5.5 months indicated that no measurable differences occurred between the different ground covers. Measurements on the tracker setup did show a clear measurable difference with an average increase of 25% in cumulative rear incident irradiance, also resulting in an increase in revenues, for the tracker with the white ground cloth compared to the reference tracker.