Reliability Analysis and Energy Yield of String-Inverter Considering Monofacial and Bifacial Photovoltaic Panels

Abstract

Bifacial PV panels are emerging technologies that can increase the energy yield of the footprint in PV systems and thereby potentially reduce the cost of energy compared to the conventional monofacial PV panels. However, the increased energy yield due to the capability of harvesting the solar energy from both front and rare surfaces of the panel can potentially increase the loading of the inverters used in the system for doing grid connection, and as a consequence affect the inverter reliability performance. This paper thus provides a comparison between monofacial and bifacial PV modules in terms of reliability of the PV inverter and energy yield of the overall system. The analysis is carried out with a mission profile from Algiers, Algeria, where different Albedo and PV module installation heights are considered. The results show that both aspects can affect the lifetime of the PV inverter considerably, and they should be taken into consideration during the design of PV inverter.