Predicting the performance of portrait-aligned vertical bifacial agrivoltaic arrays

[Display omitted] •The current of a portrait module needs to be calculated differently than landscape.•Top and bottom halves generate current independently but have same voltage.•Portrait modules are more sensitive to ground shading and inter-row shading.•Portrait modules perform worse or better depending on row spacing and season. This work simulated and contrasted the expected electrical output of portrait-oriented vertical bifacial (VBF) solar modules versus the more frequently installed landscape-oriented modules, designed and spaced apart suitably for an agrivoltaic installation. In the portrait orientation, the expected early morning and late afternoon inter-row shading is not protected by the module’s internal bypass diodes. Instead, the top and bottom halves of portrait-oriented modules operate at independent currents, leading to a different power output than a landscape-oriented module in the same circumstance. The effects of the module dimensions, module height, row spacing, and bifaciality are all taken into account. The overall annual output for the portrait orientation was comparable to that of the landscape orientation, though differences exist and the portrait modules exceeded the output of the landscape modules in specific situations. This suggests that a variety of racking options can be considered when designing VBF arrays. For an array with rows of portrait-oriented modules with bifaciality of 92 %, an energy output of over 157 MWh/acre/year (388 MWh/hectare/year) is expected with a row spacing of 20 feet (6.1 m).