Balancing the shading impact in utility-scale dual-axis tracking concentrator photovoltaic power plants

Nowadays, the growth of concentrator photovoltaic technology is limited because of a levelised cost of energy higher than conventional photovoltaic technologies. For this reason, the new concentrator photovoltaic power plants need to be optimised in all their aspects. The existing studies on optimum layout and tracker spacing for these plants have not delved deeply into this complex issue. In this paper, a concentrator photovoltaic power plant model that takes into account the main factors influencing the energy generation, including self-shading between sun trackers, is developed and, an approach based on balancing the revenue loss due to shading with wiring and land costs is proposed. Different climatic conditions, technical and, economic parameters are analysed to find optimal configurations. The results indicate that the ground cover ratio decreases with increasing annual direct normal irradiation and increasing latitude. Apart from these, the main factors influencing the optimum layout are in order of importance: land cost, revenue per generated kWh, CPV module efficiency, nominal string voltage, tracker aspect ratio, wiring cost, angle of rotation of the plant and, plant X displacement. We found rhomboid configurations better than rectangular and checkerboard in three out of five analysed cases. •A novel method for optimising concentrator photovoltaic plant layouts is developed.•It balances the revenue loss due to shading with wiring and land costs.•Ground cover ratio decreases with increasing direct normal irradiation and latitude.•A sensitivity analysis sorted the most influencing parameters by impact.•Rhomboid configurations better than rectangular or checkerboard were found.