Sensitivity of PV Plant Performance to Tracker Error

Abstract

Photovoltaic (PV) power plants are financed – and later evaluated – based on a modeled energy prediction. However, any unaccounted-for losses or other model inaccuracies may cause plants to underperform expectation, resulting in large sums of lost revenue for plant owners. For example, while tracking systems have the potential to increase plant energy significantly over fixed tilt designs, any deviation from the optimum tracking angle can create large additional losses. This work investigates two real world case studies where tracking errors resulted in significant lost generation. Further modeling work uses the new electrical shading and time series tracking input features in PlantPredict to demonstrate the range of potential losses under various tracker error scenarios for both CdTe and cSi technologies.