Flexible Terrain Tracker

[Vera]

What methods can I use to simulate a flexible terrain tracker in PV systems?

[Michele Oliosi]

In the 3D scene in PVsyst you can import trackers that follow complex slopes, or create such a scene for example with the zone tool.

At the moment, PVsyst will calculate the average orientation and apply this orientation to all trackers for the tracker rotation determination (including backtracking), irradiance transposition, and incidence angle modifier. This leads to small averaging errors. However, the shading determination, as shades are projected on individual trackers, is quite precise.

With backtracking, the assumption of all trackers moving with the same parameters forbids simulating more advanced “terrain-aware” algorithms. Usually, these algorithms are proprietary and terrain-dependent, which has made them difficult to model in PVsyst (but this may change in the future, hopefully). The backtracking algorithm in PVsyst is therefore comparable to more advanced algorithms only as a first approximation, and is by nature more conservative since there will be more remaining shadings than with a more advanced algorithm.