3D shading losses scenario with Trackers

[tecnun]

Hello Team,

Is it possible to generate and calculate a 3D shading losses scenario with trackers 1P (eg created by Helios3D), taking into account that due to topography, these trackers have uncountable different orientations? Do we still have to "flat" them or now it is possible to calculate every single orientation/slope? In all cases bifaciality must be considered.

Thank you in advance, best regards Jose

[Michele Oliosi]

Hi,

Short answer: yes, but*

PVsyst still works with a single average orientation for the transposition of the irradiance and incidence angle modifiers.
However the 3D scene may contain trackers with various orientations due to topography. The shading losses will be computed accurately using the 3D scene.

Finally the bifacial model is usable only if the orientation differences are small. Note that even in that case, the bifacial model will consider a fictional perfectly flat array for the backside irradiance computations.