The Effect of Collector Shading and Masking on Optimized PV Field Designs

Avi Aronescu and Joseph Appelbaum
Additional contact information
Avi Aronescu: School of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
Joseph Appelbaum: School of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 18, 1-10

Abstract: Photovoltaic (PV) solar fields are deployed with multiple rows. The second and subsequent rows are subject to shading and masking by the rows in front. The direct beam incident radiation on the second row is affected by shading and the diffuse incident radiation is affected by masking, expressed by sky view factor. Hence, all rows, besides the first one, receive lower incident radiation. The design of PV fields must take into account the decrease in the incident radiation caused by these two effects. The paper investigates by simulation the annual incident diffuse, direct beam and global radiation on the first and on the second row for optimized PV fields at two sites: Tel Aviv, Israel, with low diffuse component, and Lindenberg–Germany monitoring station, with a high diffuse component. The study emphasizes the importance of the diffuse incident radiation on the energy loss of the PV field. The percentage annual global energy loss due to shading and masking on the second row amounts to 1.49% in Tel Aviv and 0.46% in Lindenberg. Isotropic and anisotropic diffuse models were considered. The calculated diffuse incident energy for the isotropic model is lower than the values for anisotropic model by about 8% in Tel Aviv and 3.75% in Lindenberg.

Keywords: sky view factor; shading loss; masking loss; optimized PV fields; isotropic and anisotropic diffuse radiation models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/18/3471/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/18/3471/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:18:p:3471-:d:265473

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().