Power and Energy Commons^™

Vertical Free-Swinging Photovoltaic Racking Energy Modeling: A Novel Approach To Agrivoltaics, Koami Soulemane Hayibo, Joshua M. Pearce

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

To enable lower-cost building materials, a free-swinging bifacial vertical solar photovoltaic (PV) rack has been proposed, which complies with Canadian building codes and is the lowest capital-cost agrivoltaics rack. The wind force applied to the free-swinging PV, however, causes it to have varying tilt angles depending on the wind speed and direction. No energy performance model accurately describes such a system. To provide a simulation model for the free-swinging PV, where wind speed and direction govern the array tilt angle, this study builds upon the open-source System Advisor Model (SAM) using Python. After the SAM python model is validated, a …