modeling bifacial pv in pvlib 0.9?

[too...@yahoo.com]

Hello,

It appears that modeling a bifacial pv system in pvlib requires the use of the pvfactors package.  Can this be accomplished using pvlib 0.9 (e.g. with some work-around), or does one need to revert to pvlib 0.8 for compatibility purposes?

If in fact we need to revert to 0.8 (which evidently creates some incompatibilities with existing code we have written), are there any tips for how to best accomplish this.  In our case, we are operating with WinPython and (at present) pvlib 0.9.

Thank you very much for any insights and assistance.

Randy

[kevina...@gmail.com]

Hi Randy,

Support for pvlib==0.9.0 was recently added to pvfactors (https://github.com/SunPower/pvfactors/pull/121), but that update has not yet made it into a release.  Until that happens, you can install the updated, but not yet released, source code of pvfactors either by downloading it from github and installing it from your local copy -- https://github.com/SunPower/pvfactors/archive/refs/heads/master.zip

or by using a command like this to install it straight from github: pip install git+git://github.com/sunpower/pvfactors.git

Cheers,

Kevin

[cwh...@sandia.gov]

Hi Randy,

In a future release of pvlib (hopefully soon), we are adding a bifacial model that will be native to pvlib. It is based on this paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8980572. This model assumes infinitely long rows on a horizontal ground surface and is very similar to the model described here: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/67847.pdf  The work is in this pull request: https://github.com/pvlib/pvlib-python/pull/717

Cheers,

Cliff

[Mark Mikofski]

I also wanted to point out that the infinite sheds model in PR #717 also provides the framework for deriving both *frontside* and *backside* irradiance considering row-to-row shading from infinite number of rows in either direction. Th e existing transposition models only account for the 1st row (or last row) with no neighboring obstructions