Global Techno-Economic Performance of Bifacial and Tracking Photovoltaic Systems

This work presents a worldwide analysis on the yield potential and cost effectiveness of photovoltaic farms composed of monofacial fixed-tilt and single/dual (1T/2T) tracker installations, as well as their bifacial counterparts. Our approach starts by estimating the irradiance reaching both the front and rear surfaces of the modules for the different system designs (validated based on data from real photovoltaic systems and results from the literature) to estimate their energy production. Subsequently, the overall system cost during their 25-year lifetime is factored in, and the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is obtained. The results reveal that bifacial-1T installations increase energy yield by 35% and reach the lowest LCOE for the majority of the world (93.1% of the land area). Although dual-axis trackers achieve the highest energy generation, their costs are still too high and are therefore not as cost effective. Sensitivity analyses are also provided to show the general robustness of our findings.