Evaluation of the plane of array irradiance for a photovoltaic installation equipped with flat reflectors in different geographical locations

This work describes a plane of array irradiance (GPOA) estimation study performed for a PV system equipped with flat reflectors. In fact, adding planar reflectors in front of the PV arrays will result in an increased GPOA reaching the panel’s surface. This paper focuses on the GPOA study for a PV-Reflector system architecture in six different geographical locations. The study was conducted over a five years period of time and under various weather conditions. An analytical model was developed and experimentally validated for that purpose allowing the estimation and assessment of the GPOA for such system. Therefore, the study was performed according to an architectural optimization approach considering several geometrical variations in order to achieve the highest plane of array irradiance. The highest annual gain in GPOA added by the reflectors was obtained for Athens (35%) and regions with close latitudes showed quite similar results.