Agri Solar Thermal Systems: A Brief Study on the Energetic Potential of Bifacial Solar Thermal Systems
Abstract
The limited availability of land for large-scale solar technologies has led to the idea of combining agricultural and energetic land use. Especially bifacial Agri photovoltaics has shown to be attractive as for low installation costs. Bifacial Agri solar thermal systems have been neither analyzed nor tested, which results in a lack of research in this field. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to outline the energetic potential of a bifacial solar thermal system. A simplified modelling approach based on solar irradiance analysis was chosen to obtain the annual thermal energy yield. This included considerations of incidence angle and collector efficiency, depending on the design parameters. In comparison to a standard collector facing south and inclined at 45°, the provided annual thermal energy per m² collector area for the selected bifacial case (90° east-west oriented system) is about 8.5 % smaller. Despite this energy yield gap, there remains research interest in Agri solar thermal systems, as it allows a use of land which would not have been considered for conventional installations.