Shade Modeling for Utility-Scale PV Plants

Why do so many utility-scale PV plants chronically underperform? One of the main reasons is a lack of deep understanding of the true impacts of intra-array shading, especially on sites with sloped and uneven terrain. Hundreds of megawatt-hours in lost energy generation and tens of thousands of dollars in potential revenue are left on the table every day because shade losses are not well-quantified in the yield estimations, leading to a gap between expected and actual energy production. To minimize the impact of array shading, better modeling and mitigation technologies are needed.

Nextracker and DNV recently collaborated on a PV Tech webinar devoted to the issue of shade modeling. Director of Product Management, Software at Nextracker, Aron Dobos talked about the root causes of shade loss, the solar industry’s shade modeling state of play, and the extent of the shade loss problem. Neelesh Umachandran, Solar Performance Engineer at Nextracker, then discussed the evolving shade modeling best practices and offered examples of mitigation solutions such as Nextracker’s TrueCapture yield optimization software that can help recover much of the shade-induced energy losses. DNV’s MinWah Leung also presented an overview of the independent engineering firm’s approach to tracker terrain modeling, including its SolarFarmer energy modeling software that is incorporated into its independent energy assessments.

At the end of their presentations, there was a healthy Q&A discussion, but time ran out before many of the questions submitted could be answered. We have compiled some of the most interesting questions in this blog post, with answers provided by Aron and Neelesh.

Read the full Q&A, here.