Development of high-efficiency bifacial photovoltaic module and simulation method for its power generation

摘要

We have been producing the bifacial module, the HIT (R) Double, since 2000. This module was the first to be released in the world.(1)) We have since been developing high efficiency bifacial modules. We released a new bifacial photovoltaic (PV) module in 2013. It has a conversion efficiency of 16.0% in spite of having a light-through area of 8% within the total module area, and the temperature coefficient of the output power is quite good at -0.29%/degrees C. It passed various environmental tests that are much stricter than the industrial standard. Our field test showed the effectiveness of vertically installing the bifacial module, especially when installed on ground that highly reflects light such as snow or white limestone. We developed an original simulation method to accurately estimate the energy production of the bifacial module. A simulation accuracy of about 3.7% was confirmed through practical test results at our field test site in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. (C) 2015 The Japan Society of Applied Physics