IEA Task 13 report offers new guidelines for photovoltaic bifacial tracker systems 

Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories were part of an international team to publish a new report featuring best practices for bifacial photovoltaic tracking systems. In August, the International Energy Agency Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme Task 13 released, “Best Practices for the Optimization of Bifacial Tracking Systems 2024,” which provides an extensive overview of the current best practices and innovations in the deployment of these systems. Bifacial photovoltaic tracking systems are characterized by bifacial PV modules mounted on moveable racks that follow the sun and they are now the predominant configuration for utility-scale PV systems worldwide.

The report is a vital resource for PV project developers, investors and companies, providing comprehensive guidelines to design and build high-quality PV systems that ensure reliability and financial viability.

Key report takeaways include: 

• Market Dominance: PV systems using bifacial modules and single-axis trackers currently dominate the utility-scale PV market in many regions of the world. However, there are still many technology-specific and site-specific factors that need to be investigated to optimize the performance of these PV tracking systems.  

• Algorithm Transparency: Tracking companies avoid sharing details about how their specialized tracking algorithms work, making it difficult to evaluate their performance and assess whether they add sufficient value to the bifacial technology or to a particular project.  

• Standardizing Weather Response: The ability of trackers to respond to rare, extreme weather conditions should be standardized, as there is a significant risk that a tracker will not respond appropriately to such an event, with potentially severe consequences.  

• Improving Yield Prediction Models: Yield prediction (performance) models for bifacial tracked systems need to be improved. More high-quality, validated datasets are required for model developers to ensure that models are more consistent.  

• Agrivoltaic System Challenges: A major challenge in using bifacial modules and trackers for PV agrivoltaic systems will be to reduce the design complexity and variations for such applications. This will be necessary to take advantage of standardization, high-throughput manufacturing, and global supply chains to lower the costs. 

IEA PVPS Task 13 aims to enhance the quality, performance and reliability of PV modules and systems by summarizing technical aspects, gathering global data, and disseminating results through reports, workshops, webinars and web content. Task 13’s expertise ensures relevant analysis for stakeholders contributing to technology advancement, risk mitigation and standardization in PV research and industry.  

Read the complete report to learn how IEA PVPS Task 13 reviewed recent literature and industry standards and surveyed tracker companies and owners/operators to create this publication.