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I have been watching a number of videos about people sailing on catamarans and most of them use bi-facial cells on the back of their boats since so much of the sunlight can reflect off the ocean water.
So the lesson learned is install movable bi-facial solar panels that are automatically optimized for maximum energy output (i.e. before they become too hot, change their tilt & direction sufficiently to compensate for the anticipated undesirable thermal gain. When they cool down, optimize their tilt & direction again for maximum energy generation).
Yes. A relative is furious about solar farms going in the fields within thirty miles of where she lives. She was fine with the massive coal fired smoke stacks which could be seen from far further away as her county is entirely flat aside from one city on a hill (Lincolnshire). Drives me batty. She's got solar on each of the three houses she's built but it's not ok to have it in a field for twenty years. I tried to explain why it's important but she doesn't get it. All she really cares about as a NIMBY is that she can see something that's not pretty. I despair.
One other huge benefit I see is for big farms, when it snowing you won't have to clear the snow and even dust would stick less on a vertical setup and you can much easier clear grass and can even technically farm it and sell it for livestock.
The reason why vertical panels are cool is not only the lower amount of heat they get but also the amount of convective cooling they get. Vertical panels facilitate the natural flow of heat upwards, while horizontal ones impede it. I.e. the amount of convection per surface area is higher on vertical panels, so they cool better.
This is what I was thinking. I was also wondering whether or not it would be cost effective to add heatsjnks to the underside of panels in typical horizontal installations.
@@ClaytonMacleod There are some companies doing that. There are others that circulate a heat transfer fluid through the backside of the panels, then you can use that warmed water to pre-heat your DHW so your water heater doesn't need to work so hard.
The heat stack effect depends on the movement of air. This is an absurd explanation that completely fails and it turns out that you guys are not better informed than the actual engineers that design and study these panels, LOL.
@@Will-xk4nm Warm air rises. It can’t not move. There’s a reason passively cooled electronic devices have their heatsink fins oriented vertically. If it didn’t matter they wouldn’t orient them that way. If the air didn’t move they wouldn’t be passively cooled in the first place. They’d need fans. But they don’t have fans. They don’t have fans because the convection from the air being warmed is sufficient to move enough air to cool them. I think every home audio amplifier I’ve ever had, save one, has been a fanless device with heatsinks that have vertically oriented fins. And the sole amp I had over the years which actually did have a fan in it still used vertically oriented fins and only turned the fan on when you were asking for enough power that you’d never hear it over the music you were playing anyway. That you think it is too simple of an explanation doesn’t mean it is incorrect. It might be incorrect, or it might not be. FYI, it is possible to present conflicting information without being a jerk. If that’s your default mode, don’t even bother.
@@alanhat5252 I envy you can live in an innocent area that allows you to sincerely believe that. You live in the old America I miss. In my area, after the 2020 protests, vandalism is part of the way of life for a certain subculture in my area. As a result, No house in my neighborhood or any neighborhood around it dares display a USA flag because "certain people" will eventually see the USA flag and throw a rock. A few miles from me, there was a car dealership well-known for having a huge USA flag flying from their tall flagpole. The "patriotism is racism" problems back in the 2020 riots forced them to take down the flag because the cars in their lot would get damaged windows constantly. There are basically zero businesses that display a visible USA flag now in my city. Putting up expensive solar fences is just going to stimulate those people into vandalism
It's hard to believe that the TNO study didn't have regular horizontal panels right next to the vertical ones. That makes it super hard to get a apples to apples real world comparison. Knowing the huge variance in solar radiance by location, I'd have a hard time giving this study the credit it would otherwise deserve. Thanks for having all the references in the show notes. Individual panels vary more than the 2-3%, but the fact they even produce close to the horizontal is impressive. Edit: after researching, they don't produce close to horizontal, just 2-3% more than they thought vertical ones would, due to additional cooling from having them mounted that way.
Also Matt gets the meaning of the graph at 7:35 wrong. It's not showing anything "much cooler than their horizontal counterparts" It's just the difference between the modeled vertical vs the actual temperature. Here's the actual graph caption from the paper: "Daily profile of the module temperature: blue solid line shows observed temperatures, red dashed line presents modelled ones, and green dotted line displays ambient temperatures." Not vertical vs horizontal.
This video neatly addresses a key dilemma: I have an asphalt shingle roof that has maybe another decade of life left to it, and I don't really want to put solar on it only to remove it when it comes time to replace the roof. I'm also replacing all my privacy fencing, and I realize I have two long runs that go almost perfectly north-south, making them ideal for rows of vertical solar panels. Meaning that even if I need to purchase several extra panels to meet my total energy needs, the savings on labor and fence materials should more than pay for it. Even better, this makes my solar installation a DIY process, as there will be no need for any roof-top work. On top of that, I expect to have less maintenance due to less deposition of our insidious San Diego dust that keeps blowing in. Win-win! Thanks!
Yes, but BEWARE the lawn mower throwing debris at the panels. Typical power mowers can throw rocks at least 100 feet/30 meters, including upward trajectories (probably from richochets off the ground).@@serversurfer6169 @flymypg
Flat panels on a roof will extend the life of the shingles as they protect the shingles. But in your case, you might want to check with an installer to get their opinion.
Not much of a dilemma I'd say. I dunno in your case, but at least in my area it's pretty normal for installers to offer free removals for your panels for whenever you need to change your roof. They only have to do it, roughly once every decade twice per house, so it's not a biggy for them to do that. And it gets rid of another silly petty excuse that people make for themselves to not go solar! Really taking panels off isn't that hard. Don't be lazy! The technical detail is mostly in just in drilling the holes, and making sure all the framing pieces line up and are screwed tight. Once the frame is on the panels just bolt onto it normally.
My panels were disconnected by a handy electrician ( a 2 min job) removed while new roof was put on, then reinstalled and reconnected ( it was just one cable for a lineup of 6 panels.)
One observation I have made is that installing solar panels on roofs over habited rooms made a huge difference in less heat pumped into the building and not only created electricity, but reduced room temps by 15 degrees! That means a HUGE savings in cooling that room! I live in a desert, sooo.. I am going to vertically mount some of my panels on south and west walls with stand off from the wall to allow convection to take away the heat and not transfer it into my walls... double improvement with reduced load on my cooling system AND cooler walls while I collect energy!!! 👍👍👍 Any cooling I don't have to do is a huge savings!! Yes, I'm kinda screwed in winter, cuz my walls won't get sun, but my cost is 8 months of cooling, not 4 months of heating. Now to gather data before the install!
My dad worked installing chain-link fences. I grew up going to work with him and he showed me that when you leave the 6 foot 30 pound iron digger bar lying on the ground in the sun , when you go to pick it up you can’t touch it it’s too hot however if you leave it leaning against something or stabbed into the ground at a 90° angle it’s fine it’s just warm. I never really thought about this phenomenon till now perhaps the surface is getting the same amount of light but less heat when it’s vertical.idk
It isn't the same amount of light/heat, the maximum is when the angle is near 90* and it goes to 0 when you reach 180/0*. The panels in the video don't get the same amount of light during all times of the day as a tilted panel, they get less at all times of the day, but they make up for it to get a small 2.5% benefit.
Think of it like this, if you lift a cook pot lid straight up vs lifting and tilting. The tilted lid lets the condensation run off quickly. It's the same with heat. Heat wants to rise so creates faster air flow up the side of a more vertical surface so better cooling. Also roofs are (sometimes by 50F) hotter than ground level air temps but roofs often get best access to direct sun. Lots of factors.
Now imagine that 6 foot long bar being an automobile hood that's painted dark brown. In August, in the South. I couldn't get my hand closer than 6 inches from my grandmother's car, but could hold my hand against my grandfather's white car for about 30 seconds.
This is a great example of accidental biomimicry. Some species of termites build flat east west facing mounds to prevent overheating and to capture the early and late sunshine for the thermoregulation of their mounds.
I'd be willing to bet if we make them smaller and put them on towers to allow them to flap around freely that we might even see better results. Have them all connect to the middle tower and run all the power down to a central bundle in the ground.
@@jaerin1980a flag set up gets the best of both worlds, better cooling, no static shadow like VBPV, no dust like horizontal PV and less chance of pest infestation eating or damaging wires. No dew from moisture either
In college, we created a photovoltaic panel with water flowing behind it to cool the panel. It created hot water and an increase in the output of the panel. I’m not sure why this isn’t being used more now but it’s a similar concept. A cooler panel equals more electricity.
Hybrid solar panels do exist, but they need some specific installation: a big water tank to store the hot water and water heaters. A lot of people don't want ton invest on thoose, that's probably why they are not that popular. I also eard they where not that good but don't know exactly why (efficiency? twice the problems on one device?) I'm part of an association renovating a house and we decided to put separated thermal and photovoltaic panels for maximum efficiency.
I discovered this years ago when I adjust my panels a set of my panels to a 72 degree orientation for more power over winter. When summer came along I got lazy and didnt readjust them to 32 degrees for summer with the rest of my sets. I found my voltages were producing SLIGHTLY less current, but voltages during peak heat was about 10V more. I was getting an extra 200W from that set as a result. I ended up leaving the panels where there were at. They got less dust collection and when snow hit I melted off much faster
I was wondering about this! It seems there should be an optimal angle, perhaps calculated as a function of the ambient temperature at any given moment along with the panel's internal temperature (but within the bounds of the adjustment mechanism).
Wonder how much extra adding in earth batreries underneath would harvest on off hours. My other thought being its probably easier to dual use the land around panels this way, easier to put crops, plumbing, or landscaping around.
You didn’t even mention the reduction in hail damage, bird droppings, dust, snow. Also this seems like a great place for tiny prism glass. I don’t know what it’s called exactly.
At least in the case of utility solar, O&M teams will tilt the panels as vertical as possible to avoid hail damage currently and to rinse the panels during rain.
You get way less bird droppings, dust, snow, hail damage, true, but higher risk of damage / dirt when mowing lawn, doing gardening, etc. I have vertical solar array on the house facade and I had to replace one panel because it got hit by a stone shot from the lawnmower. From then I only use trimmer. But I still not regret it, ones needs to be more careful as the panels are closer to human activity.
My point is !! Any solar panel working to charge a phone or a battery is better than taking from the grid !! There are lots of people doing these videos, but when I come across your one, I always watch them as you’re very interesting very smart, very intelligent, not boring at all !! Cheers from Port Hedland Western Australia !! I am fully off grid !! 😎
I live in northern Montana and I put up vertical panels 2 years ago. They have been performing very well in the snow. They never collect snow and ice so I don't have to clean them.
I did too on my wall just for the ease of it all in MN it all gets 4hrs sun no matter but that's all a guy can expect I still have 10 panels in the box , playing and testing 16 100 w panals gotta learn yourself it seems electricians don't work with them much but have the knowledge but I'm a sider 😂😊
In the paper "Thermal model in digital twin of vertical PV system helps to explain unexpected yield gains", it says "The adjusted value for Uc leads to a 2.5% higher annual energy yield and higher performance ratio, partially offsetting the energy loss due to the less than optimal configuration.". Not that the vertical angle is better than the optimal angle as the video kind of implies. The production of the optimal angle is far greater than the 2.5% gained from extra cooling. For agrivoltaics this is still kinda interesting and good information.
I think the fact that vertical solar panel energy generation aligns more closely with energy demand is also a bit plus. Since it reduces the need for energy storage. The overall loss in efficiency may still be worth it if the cost of more panels is less than installing more energy storage.
Yes, this was my thought too - well expressed. The regular tilted panels can also have a benefit to livestock in agrivoltaics as it gives them places to shelter from the sun or rain/snow.
@@cherubin7th I had a thought during that moment in the video, "what's engineering or physics problem is preventing harvesting that heat for useful energy?" Probably can't run a turbine off that (Maybe?) but perhaps offset heating costs with the proper set-up in a small home. If nothing else, harvesting it and moving it elsewhere would help with the hot-panels problem.
@ayesaac Yes, I would agree. For example, you can use panels from French company DualSun, and you get to both harvest thermal energy and improve photovoltaic efficiency by cooling the panels with the liquid that harvest the thermal energy to heat water.
I can see it being better in northern areas like here in Canada. In the dead of winter, the suns angle is much, much lower than in the summer. Plus, the snow won't build up, and the snow reflects a lot of the sun. This is awesome
Real big win of this is snow immunity. Second big win is those of us scared of heights and can't get on our roofs will find these easy to clean as just fence panels.
@@Chazinthius On flat roofs they would. And the square mileage of large flat or nearly flat roofs (factories, warehouse, agricultural hangars, shopping malls, apartment buildings, many hotels, etc) is huge. In France, where I live, a statistic is made of it, it is called the "grands toits" (large roofs) area, and it stands at around 3000 km2. If all equipped with solar panels... which should be technically very easy, it would generate more electricity annually than the total French power consumption, would take zero land away from agricultural or other uses, and would have negligible esthetic or other negative impacts.
@@st-ex8506 but why would you put this on your roof when you could put it anywhere else on your property where it would effectively double as a fence? Fencing is expensive, and a pain to install. if you get a fence and electricity generation out of the same object, big win.
@@tonydeveyra4611 Not everyone has a garden to be fenced. I do, and a 10 acre one at that, but it is delimited by hedges, not by fencing... not good for PV panels, but excellent for the biodiversity! I was talking of flat roofs of large buildings, not of those of family houses.
@@tonydeveyra4611 I didn't mean to imply they should go on roofs, more that you don't have to go on the roof because they can be a fence. But also, kids, kids break things. Someone will pass your fence and throw a rock at it.
Using vertical panels for a fence or wall (as shown in the video) is an intriguing concept. Especially out west where everyone's home is separated by barriers of some sort.
I've been off-grid solar at home for more than a decade in Canada. In winter when the suns angle is barely above the horizon the "optimal" panel tilt is already close to vertical. I've been running my panels vertical for the last few years while there is snow on the ground and see better output. I've been attributing these increased outputs to the combination of reflection off of the snow on the ground and the lack of accumulation of snow/frost on the face of the panels. With the ambient temp below freezing the cooling is probably having an effect as well. On a -30C sunny day the array exceeds it's rated output significantly.
so, after some reading, I think these only generate more power than traditional PV installations once you get pretty far north, like the nordic countries, Canada, and Russia, because then the sun stays close to the horizon most of the time, and rises and sets much farther north. On the other hand, these are really good for reducing the need for grid storage (and gas peaker plants) because the double peak in the morning and evening is complementary with regular monofacial PV to flatten out the overall solar power generation curve. With how cheap solar is, that alone seems like a great reason to use vertical bifacial PV in more places, especially on houses and in residential areas where power usage at noon is very low anyway.
You can actually simulate and replicate these findings easily! At globalsolaratlas open 3 tabs. One with south-facing 20 degrees panels, and two with East/West-facing vertical panels. Add-up the annual kWh and you'll see that it's producing more, especially in summer. Multiply one of the numbers by 0.9 (what their paper assumes) or 0.8 (what I have) for 90% bifaciality. I tried this with UK. The winter numbers are terrible, but the summer ones are even better than before.
According to Over easy solar AS ( if I read their sales pitch correctly ) vertical panels only generates about 50% of a horizontal panel, but the 50% is more than previously expected. and those test are in Oslo (equivalent to the southern part of Alaska) it will probably get worse if you install in further south. The way I read the underlying papers it looks more like they expected a 70% loss compared to normally installed panels ando only got 50% loss. A huge boost from what was expected but still a 50% loss over all.
I have two sets of panels (for various reasons). One is optimized for summer and are pretty flat, the other is optimized for winter and are pretty vertical. Vertical panels in the summer here would be useless. The winter panels are almost useless because of the short days and cloud cover (even though its a desert). I still think solar is a novelty, too unreliable for an real application, it just knocks the electric bill down (on good months).
Just to point out... you can grow tomatoes in Florida under partial cover but not in full-day direct sunlight. There are lots of areas of the world where the efficiency of combustion based power generation actually drops off and many of the staple food crops need some protection from elements. So while I doubt the vertical panels would help tomatoes in Florida since they're reflecting and emitting the heat radially back to the ground.... they would be able to produce not only wind shadows but also reduce some evaporation, windscour and increase fertility drift collection. The main concern is simply ensuring they're made with material that can be cleaned by absolutely crop-safe chemistry.
You entire comment sounds odd. Solar panels surfaces are plastic or glass. The material doesn't really dictate if you can clean them with just water. The stuff you are cleaning of matters, dust could be cleaned with a soft cloth, but if it's like tree sap you can't really just use water.
some heat is removed by air convection upwards. IMO there's a lot of space for tuning. Like making them taller with a space for the air at the bottom. Using reflective paint on the ground...
I have just taken my average small semi-detached house with limited land OFF-GRID, it has been hard work and in mid winter I have to be frugal. But two things nobody seems to think of is Cleaning/Maintenance and Snow coverings. One thing I will be fitting to make winter easier is vertical panels on my walls, some are of the type that have better low light performance. My advice to people is you really need panels on all elevations. One big problem I have is sunny winter mornings I have not currently got any panels that can harness this energy and what I find is in the winter frequently has the day progresses the moisture builds up in the atmosphere, clouds form in the winter sky by the time my other panels would normally be exposed. Yes fit South facing panels to start, but use West facing panels to catch the late evening summer sun so that you have plenty of power to run the washing machine when you get home from work. In the summer my North facing elevation is actually very well illuminated late evening, and I still do not have any panels to catch it. Multiple panels, multiple positions, multiple charge controllers, so that if one burns out you have plenty of built in redundancy in the system. Not yet got into wind, I expect to get a small useful amount on bad windy dark days, but not a lot from a small urban wind turbine, my other venture will be in Thermal electric to generate small power from my wood stove. A good idea is to think of your house has your own micro grid system, when sizing stuff, work out what loads would be useful and what amount of wind or solar could power those loads. Create multiple micro systems so if one goes down you always have back up. I actually have a rare old 12 volt only Petrol generator, so far this winter it has probably now consumed £20 worth of fuel, pitch that against the truly obscene standing charges, I used to pay for of £35 a month and its a no brainer.
local conditions permitting, one could also consider creating reflective surfaces which re-direct sunlight onto some of the solar panels earlier / later in the day. like one commenter earlier wrote - they get extra yield from reflections off a nearby lake as well as a shiny nearby roof. another (albeit small) power source for blackout preparation or off grid living, especially when resources from solar + wind may dwindle during prolonged bad weather conditions: exercise treadmills attached to generators (I've seen TH-cam videos where people used old car alternators) heat generating appliances such as washing machines, power showers, kettles could be supplied with pre-heated water from stoves /fireplaces, which should reduce electric demand drastically if that were previously used to heat all the water.
Just use separate controllers for different angles and take advantage of the sun for more hours in the day, with larger scale 3 or 4 controllers can work better than one big one that gets too hot, you have X storage at some point it fills the earlier and later in the day power is full the more you have at night
We did a nearly vertical PV install that had reflected light from a lake and a metal roof. In the Winter, we had three suns pumping sunlight onto the array. ( i.e. Direct sun, reflected sun from the roof, and reflected sun from the water. ) The yields on the array were the same in the Summer and the Winter.
Love your channel! As a sheep rancher I want to see more sheep grazing amongst these vertical solar farms, sheep are optional in converting weeds & grasses to protein and wool! Keep up the great work!
could probably do cattle, too. The issue with using cattle in traditionally angled PV installations, as I've heard from agrivoltaic expects, is that the cattle are just too tall to fit under the panels. Not an issue with vertically oriented panels, and there's a lot more cattle in the US than sheep--not that I don't like lamb, both are delicious!
@@sagetmaster4 running a dairy operation on some kind of agrivoltaic field would be...next level challenging. Solar grazing probably only works for meat animals.
If you let your chickens follow up after your sheep, you'll get an increase in carbon absorption into the earth which gives a higher yield in your next crop of grasses.
Engineer here (mechanical, focus on renewable energy) I really like how this configuration overlaps with demand because the biggest problem with solar energy will remain to be storage. Added efficiency helps, and this sure adds different opportunities in installment methods and plans, but I feel like the core issues are still unaddressed Vertically stacking them like a tower sounds like a nightmare to deal with when different levels of shading are taken into account which tends to have catastrophic effects on output, but the idea of having panels integrated in plots of land doing other things seems very effective. I see the potential here (despite shading issues)
I'm also more interested in a ground array. I may eventually put them on my roof too, but if we have the space and it's just grass I don't see why we shouldn't use it first. Provided it's a good location etc
I am absolutely NOT putting them on my roof! EVERY hole (screw/wiring) will eventually leak! Ground-based is easier to maintain and adjust... plus better cooling!
I live in Tokyo and have a small 1kw solar system on my balcony. The temperatures in Japanese summertime can reach 38c degrees in the shade. In the sun probably closer to 50c. I have 9 x 110w panels running in parallel which are Shingled all black modules which of course means they get scourging hot. If you then consider that panels generally are tested in a 25C environment to grade them, it quickly becomes a problem. A voltage drop of 0.08v each degree over 25 means a 2volt drop pr panel in my case in the summer(assuming that the panels are 50c. They are likely hotter I have not measured.) And I can tell you the performance suffers for it like 50% on the entire system almost, however as soon as there is a breeze performance goes up a lot.
PV designers should put a bit more effort into heat sinks or heat storage to pipe away all that nearly boiling water for alternative uses. Imagine if all of the units in your building had the same setup with the same heat gain but all piped to a hot water storage system that could then be used for laundry, showers, ect. Cools your panels and would be almost free.
I suspect that the undersides of all panels needs to be black in hot climates to radiate heat from the panel. I suspect that is part of the reason for the increase in efficiency for the vertical panels.
@@gameratortylerstein5636 It already exists as hybrid panels. The odd is that it's much more complicated solution and it's not suitable in areas with cold winters. You would need to use glycol instead water etc.
i experimented with this myself. i put it down to the panels being much cooler(up to 15 degrees c) when not aimed at the australian sun directly. Edit: i was looking for longevity from the panel not a voltage increase. i thought keeping it cooler may make it last a little longer.
So you get a few percent more energy from them,... 1) I would hope so, they have TWICE the collecting area 2) what is the additional cost of bifacial solar cells? 3) seeing as they cannot have a blocking mechanical back support, are they less durable, or more expensive to make? (I'd also expect that vertical mounts, only secured at bottom are a right nightmare in high hinds, requiring more substantial mounting hardware) Also, the fact that these researchers didn't even set up an actual bifacial array AND a "control" latitudinally oriented arrray is extremely suspect.
I have mount my solar panels vertically and is working great. A real benefit is that dirt, tree leaves and snow cannot cover the panels. The first time I notice this was at the time I built a veranda outside and cutting many pieces of wood. The wood cutting dust was everywhere, on any horizontal surface, except on the panels.
There are already solar panel banks installed vertically in Finland. Some residential apartment buildings might have their entire south wall covered in solar panels. It doubles as a surface cover, produces electricity and there is no problems with bird poo, autumn leaves, winter snow, or dust and other dirt. Another huge benefit in Norway, Finland, Canada etc. is that the vertical solar panels actually produce some power in the winter. Because the sun is so low for the whole day in the deep winter normally tilted panels, which are usually always low and covered in snow, don't produce much power. It's also much cheaper and easier installing and maintainin panels on a wall rather than on a roof. (Roofs in these northern countries are often rather steep due to snow loads and high rain accumulation). Solar panels are dirt cheap. The installation, electronics and electrical components are much more expensive. It just makes sense adding 100% extra panels for a vertical installation just for the heck of it if you have the space.
I wouldn't really say that Solar panels are "dirt cheap". Maybe for industry, government, etc but not for the average person. Otherwise, I agree with the rest of your excellent post.
The great majority of Canadians live south of Berlin. Toronto is south of Avignon. Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory is up there with Helsinki. It's a small town.
As you explained part of how BVPVs work is because light is reflected off snow/roof/next solar panel onto the a solar panel. This reminds me of a years-old ad about a guy who paired 2 single-sided solar panels into a horizontal V shape so reflected light would bounce between the faces of the 2 panels. Because each ray of light hit each panel multiple times more of it was converted into electricity instead of being lost as reflected light. He claimed this significantly improved the electricity generation. He racked multiple "V"s into a vertical column thus reducing both racking needs and required space. He researched the most efficient angle of the V and for a nominal fee would send you his findings. I can't remember his name. Please investigate if this is true and is anyone doing it.
I remember reading something about this years ago. Pretty sure it was the same thing you saw, because I remember that plans could be purchased. No idea if it would really work like he claimed, but I remember that my hunch at the time was that it would collect more energy per area of ground covered, but likely would collect less energy per panel.
Got 9.8kW PV on the south facade, 90°, on the wall. Best thing ever. Much more in the winter, no snow and no unneeded peak in the summer compared to the roof PV. Living at 52°N.
@@casemodder89 Its around that what PVGis says (tool to calculate PV with location and alignment). Theres nothing on cloudy days, but a bit of sun has double the yield of the same PV size on the E/W roof. Living at 52°N. 70° south would de ideal here for best year round PV.
That's very interesting, we are studying to install solar panels in our winery vineyard in Catalonia, and maybe this vertical design could be a great solution. It allows us to work easily through the rows of vines, and also if they are installed properly and we adapt the orientation of the panels to project its shadow to the vines, it could give more fresh temperatures allowing the plants to rest during the hours of major sunlight incidence and help to decrease the temperature of the plants during summer hot months. Thx for the useful information Matt.
Coming to the end of the video, we have the same problems in SA, cost/W of a bifacial PV MODULE is +/- 4 times the cost of a normal unit, with only an average reported 20% increase in yield, however mounted in a traditional way. Mounted vertically is then 22.5%? while being 4 times as expensive doesn't quite make super sense. We have done an experiment on a building, where we put bifacial panels on a horizontal lattice running up and through convection underground, pulls up cool air across them which worked well until the vacuum and modules were broken by a grass cutter hitting a stone hahaha, but worked great on keeping voltage high
I live in Vietnam, we have lots of sunlight and horizontal solar panels installation. It's a second roof that takes a few degrees off the roof. We don't clean the panels, Vietnam coastal wind & rainy season cleans them. The only concern is supports needs rust control.
My guess is temperature of the panel. Of course I had panels for years and know a cool sunny day produces more then a hot sunny day. This sounds great for crops and solar combo!
In Northern climates, us off griders can never get enough out of our solar panels in the winter. A vertical panel wouldn't easily be covered with snow for days at a time like min do now, and get more reflectivity from the snow on the ground. For such situations I would think the primary face should point south due to the low angle of the sun.
4:05 good job. I know bifacial but they never mentioned this advantage until now. So you basically get good generation in the early morning and late afternoon but not noon. A side effect of this, due to less peak generation, you don't need to buy a powerful inverter just to capture a short peak of power generation around noon. Inverter cost is being left behind the rapid drop of solar panel prices. Additionally, in solar farms, you don't need a tracker that adds costs-we just need a large solar farm or solar pv company to confirm this. Sadly, for most residential installations, a vertical bifacial is not practical.
One aspect only touched on here and not really fleshed out is the financial return for the more demand-correlated output of vertical farms. Power distribution pay (at least where we are) quite fluid rates that match their demands, its why the addition of batteries pay back far more than you'd think. While the total energy capture might be only 2.5% higher, the distribution better matching the higher rates you can get is actually a far bigger impact on ROI. We have done simulations based on data from the same study (those charts were horrifyingly familiar seen outside of a work context!) and almost 15% more money can be had, and that was presuming some very conservative price tracking. If you are considering a small-scale farm or even a domestic situation where you can sometimes get very variable reverse tariffs, you might see more like 30% gains by distributing double-skin panels vertically. One interesting side note though - if you do have the 20% higher up front costs (which almost all go into the structure by the way, not the panels which can be very similar from some suppliers), then you are still better off with putting that in storage, assuming the gains you want to make are from variable-tariff sale prices, and that's simply because the demand curve is not just at the beginning and end, its outside the beginning and end of the sunny times, and to get the supply to match that, well you need batteries - but if you have em, and have the wits to carefully control them, you can get a huge payback.
In architecture school, we were taught to design according to sun exposure (Amongst other factors). So the vertical solar panels actually don’t surprise me. This was such a fun video. Thanks for sharing this info with your audience.
This is fascinating to me. I'm in Florida where you'd think everyone would have solar, but the insurance companies won't write homeowner policies if you have panels on your roof. We are currently building a home and now I'm wondering about the effectiveness of vertical panels in the back yard or as a fence line. Thanks for sharing this.
There is a company in Norway make PV balcony railing... Norway is further north, and energy prices and energy demand is higher in the winter. On the other hand, east west panels can benefit from the higher evening cost of electricity...
Thermal solar has an objective to catch heat (infrared) which is the opposite point of this objective to catch high frequency photonic energy ( UV) while staying within a cool temperature so as not to lose efficiency in electricity. So vertical is not the best optimization for thermal according to this discovery.
@@drillerdev4624 Many farmers would be irrigating their fields with some sort of sprinkler system. Building the sprinklers directly into the same structure as the solar panels would make a lot of sense.
@@drillerdev4624 We use water and cooling towers in large buildings/etc because of energy savings but small buildings are not worth the initial expense and maintenance costs. A 50sq.ft solar panel would get hot enough to make steam, using hundreds of gallons of water +/- a week. Running a cooling tower is a nasty, biohazard requiring biocides, PH adjustments, so constant monitoring and mineral buildup (scale) and daily water dumps. A home hot water tank would be overwhelmed with this load.
@@Dana5775 Alternatively, you can use panels from French company DualSun, and you get to both harvest thermal energy and improve photovoltaic efficiency by cooling the panels with the liquid that harvest the thermal energy to heat water.
I use a vertical panel with an ultraclear glass in front and a fan for 2 years. Temperature of the air is up to 60 C, normally 30-40 C. Like Trombe wall with a photovoltaic panel. In summer hot air can heat water, I shall test it next summer.
Matt, i think you missed 1 big disclaimer of this study. The Panels perform better than expected for their *orientation*. It is still better to mount the same Panels in an "optimal" Position for Max Overall Power. Still there are good reasons for mounting them vertcal.
I can only say how pleased I was to see a black engineer explaining things to a white blue collar...about time the diversity became a reality...the sad part was both were males.
The vertical orientation helps regarding weather, too! No snow build up, for starters. Hail storms are another by minimizing surface area exposed to falling ice. No leaf build up and less dust build up. I can see some really good advantages here.
One shortcoming is probably drag, though. Vertical panels would be a lot mor susceptible to wind damage than horizontal. You probably wouldn't want to install them in high places like the rooftops of towers.
@@QuesoCookies True. Though they wouldn't suffer from lift, however (say, from a microburst in tornadic areas - the stuff that pulls roofs off, but doesn't knock walls down).
I’m a truck driver in the USA and I’ve noted many large solar panel fields installed the past couple years. None look like they are assembled like this. All are laying at angle toward the sun. I guess the modern version has not made it here yet.
Using the land for shade tolerant plants is one way of approaching it. Another is to use the system to provide partial shade in otherwise desert conditions. Depending on how far apart tie rows are, you can limit the maximum direct sun. You could even plant different varieties different distances from the shade. Likewise, you could use the system, along with an open-cycle ground-water cooling loop and do three things- warm the ground itself as a hedge against frost, make the panels more efficient, and also facilitate irrigation. If you built extra strong foundations on the edges of a field, and suspended loads in tension, you could manage extreme winds by pivoting off the base while anchored, allowing the mass of the panels to dampen otherwise overwhelming pressure. In low wind, you relax tension and let the panels rest on the ground. You still have to build a line of supports along the way to collectively prevent swaying. You’d also use cross supports between rows. If plan for it, you could manage extreme wind by lifting the panels so they feather free, then lower the common cable again to confine the movement of the panels such that they remain in contact with the ground (likely killing some plants). The less effect the worst wind can do, the lighter and cheaper the whole can be. There would be advantages if the field posts required no permanent foot.
You think like a raised 4 panel array is ugly but these lifeless straight line columns aren't? My understanding of beauty is in direct contrast to you it seems and I can obsess for unhealthily long chunks of time over flat straight and true, but, as they say, straight lines don't exist in nature and in buildings can easily lead to that sickly institutionalized feeling. I think vertical can have a place but I'm a HUUUGE fan of garden partitions and privacy screens and even with that, on their own, vertical panels look anemic and uglier than shit. I don't like panels on any roof that isn't south facing but thats cuz I think it's inefficient. Putting a post in the ground and panels 8ft above you isn't going to be cutting into most people's freedom of movement (assuming you have the space). Panels can even be arranged to look like flower petals opening up. Idk man, I'm really trying to understand here and I'm just coming up short Do you think giant windmills are ugly too? Because the majority of people think they look freaking awesome. If we were 18th century Dutch, would you have been against those windmills going up too? Progress is appealing, exciting. Conserving has a place, but if it's trying to conserve old customs that have no real reason to exist (like infant mutilation) beyond tradition, just accept that your ways are in the outs, in just the same way as your generation did to a number of your parents mores.
@@Mix1mum Yup, I have pedestal ground mounts, too, on the farm site, and they look fine. Easier to maintain than roof mounts, too. But in the fields, these east-west bifacial verticals will look much better than a field full of south mounts. The fields full of south mounts on dirt where nothing grows cause shade, usually surrounded by a chain link fence - these arrays are a blight.on the countryside. Better than a coal plant, certainly, but I like the promise of this simple innovation for farm country.
I love the idea of adding solar to existing areas collaboratively, eg. the highway barriers (here in QLD Australia we have so much sun and so many stretches of highway).
Hmm.... great idea, but most QLD politicians are pushing to do away with renewables & re-embrace coal, gas & fossil fuels ????? & they say climate change is a myth...
I didn't put my guess in the comments, but I guessed right. I have studied plant biology at the graduate level and its funny how this is similar to some of the tradeoffs plants have to deal with. Most plants photosynthesize at lower efficiency as the temperature goes up. This is both because of lowered enzymatic activity but also because high temperatures cause water to burn off too fast (causes leaf burns, xylem cavitation, general dehydration) -- plants respond by closing their stomata which slows the rate of carbon fixation. Plants employ lots of different strategies to increase their efficiency by reducing heat. These include white wax and hairs, as well as more vertical leaf surfaces, such as in many monocots when they are drought stressed. I think solar engi
If they are mounted in an open field anyway, one could also mount them on hinges (one plastic bearing left and right, and connected top and bottoms + a drive motor) and just flip them horizontal in the middle of the day. This would reduce the dip in the middle of the day at minimum cost.
Then you return to the issues with overheating. It's also way, way more complexity in the setup, extra energy use, more stuff that needs maintenance and that can break... Doesn't really make much sense.
@@amunak_look at the graph at 3:52 the vertical east west panels (green line) have a massive dip in the middle of the day. Flipping the panels horizontal would certainly lead to higher temps and thereby lower efficiancy (for that time) but it would fill the gap abd probably cause a quite constant output over the day. And the mechanics aren't that fifferent from the window openers in greenhouses which do work with verry low maintenance.
After seeing this video I went out and separated two of my new BYD bifacials (the biggest panel they make) ran one vertically and one at 36 degrees south. Both were sent through a shunt and then the + and - where connected. When it got dark I went out and checked and the vertical panel produced almost half of what the panel set to my latitude did. My guess is this study was done so far north that the optimal orientation was closes to vertical with Norway being at the 66-69 degree latitude.
I have an island system with just 360 Watts peak + 6kWh storage for emergency supply. Modules are vertically mounted SE and SW (defined by the building). On sunny days I get roughly 0.7 kWh in winter and 0.8 kWh in summer - vertical orientation is a good equalizer between summer and winter gains. For emergenca power the winter is more important than the summer and in typical societies the power demand is higher during winter. So in general: Vertical mounting has lots of benefits but maybe a good mixture is the way to go which shapes the power generation graph more like the demand graph. The rest can be done by batteries, at least on a 24 h time scale.
I am telling this to everybody for more than 2 years about VanLife and people putting their solar panels on their rooftops. Each morning, evening, and especialy during european winter, the sun is not up here, it is more horizontal ! Finally someone getting it 😂❤❤
On the other hand for anyone else than solar farms this setup is unusable due to objects obstructing the light. Friends of mine were tinkering with the setup a few years ago and they ended with a 45° angle even in our conditions approximately 60° is best but there were trees, buildings etc.
Cooler temperatures improve panel efficiency. I've heard about that before. I believe here in France there is a panel manufacturer that runs water piping on the back of the panel to transfer heat from the panel into the water, thus cooling the panel and warming the water. This warmed water then feeds into the hot water supply of the building, saving some energy on water heating.
One detail not discussed that is very relivant - if you factor in the time of day value of energy generated vertical PV modules might be financially much better than horizontal. Even considering when battery storage is added into the equation minimizing generation of electrical energy in the middle of the day when the spot price might be negative is a major factor to consider.
Turns out motorized mounts can get the best of both worlds to maximize returns. Angle perfectly until the critical temperature is reached, then adjust to east west vertical orientation until temperature drops back to optimal temperatures. Rinse and repeat. Definitely adds complexity and more maintenance to the system, but could work wonders for efficiency!
Motorised mounts are more expensive than just getting more panels these days. I have a location where I was thinking of motorised because the panels can't be roof mounted, but it's shockingly expensive compared to a static mount. The idea of a vertical mount is very interesting to me because it is potentially even easier than a traditional sloped mount, because its mounted like a fence panel with just two end posts (subject to wind loading).
what about mounting it at the top hanging down and the servo at the bottom tilting in +- 15 degrees at forenoon and then afternoon. Right in the morning, at noon and before evening it should stand just vertically. Such tilting should be quite sufficient. But the question is the overall daily surplus yield of energy, I would bet about 15% ?
I live close to the 67 parallel. I have quite some education in photovoltaic and renewable energy(but 10 years old and not maintained). I have been thinking about VPV-panels for my home for several reasons(mounted on the south wall of my house). 1. Less time covered by snow. 2. I dont need the most energy peak summer, I need it in february when the sun is low on the sky. 3. More protected from the elements. You just gave me more to think about and when I have the money I will invest in VPV-panels.
i wonder how much more of a benefit it would be to run Vertical Bi-Facial panels with water cooling to pull more heat away from the panels into a water source for a building/home to use as a hot water source, then loop the cooled water from the building back into the solar panels. The building/home would act as basically a large heat exchange. I know Linus from LTT used the hot water from his panels to warm his pool, and the pool acts as the heat exchanger, would be interesting to see if, on a larger scale, this would be beneficial. Granted it would end up costing more due to plumbing requirements, but not having your hot water heater running constantly would likely reduce overall building electricity usage so might be a net positive.
Very interesting... 1. If the direction the panels are placed runs east-west, the extra power received from the "back" side isn't as important. Further, I've noticed most standard solar panels have white backs. If they had black backs instead, would vertical single-sided panels also benefit from improved heat dissipation? 2. One of the biggest enemies of solar farms is hailstorms, and one of the reasons I haven't gone ahead with a planned solar system was fear of a hailstorm taking it out. Mounting panels vertically would mitigate nearly all of the issue.
i really like the idea of using these vertical solar panels as sound-barriers along highways! and the way they seem to line up with our usage-charts! (would not apply to roads, i know) almost too good to be true.
Far too easy to vandalize. Think of how many metal signs already have “holes” put in them. Imagine letting someone know they now have all this glass around them too.
@@aussie2uGA True but pretty sure that's only a problem in 'Murica and maybe your Aussie outback, plenty of other places in the world where people are grown ups
Yay, I guessed heat! Interesting to come across this today. I’m just starting to think about how to implement solar on a tiny budget. I want to do some travel when I retire, so being mobile interests me. Then my power went out and came on, then went off again, three times in a row the other day. So I started thinking about a couple of panels and storage batteries to cover some basic energy needs with the more frequent power outages I fear are coming in the future. But I don’t want to put panels on my roof, and I can’t afford a whole system. So I was thinking of putting two or three panels in a more vertical orientation where I have space next to the house along my driveway. After seeing this video, that isn’t sounding so nuts! That said, it’s a south facing location. Thanks for giving me more to ponder!
My only guess is that the light entering the panels at a steep angle actually causes the light energy to diffuse in the panel cells better than when it strikes at a perpendicular angle and mostly reflects out.
Didn't think I got it, but the temperature explanation makes sense. Seems to me not only will these solar panels have an efficiency bump, but you can actually fit more in the same space. As long as you aren't shading neighboring panels except very late and early in the day, you can still smush them closer together than angled panels. Like you also said though, much more convenient for using the space in between them.
One of the big advantages too is that snow is less likely to stay on them so that means less maintenance and output immediately once it's daylight. When I setup my off grid solar system I plan to go vertical for that reason alone.
Sometimes advancement isn't some big technical breakthrough. More often it is some other application or combination of use that makes something more economical. In this case the vertical orientation helps the thermal performance since backside heat isn't trapped and it can convect that heat up and away. 1) In the plains states they install snow fence to prevent drifting over highways. Why not vertical solar. 2) In urban area they erect sound attenuating walls along highways that bisect residential areas. Why not face them on the south sides with panels? 3) Backsides of billboards? 4) Privacy fencing
I'm surprised the following hasn't been brought up: 1. Solar panels are quite reflective, as you can see in a lot of shots in this video. I wouldn't be surprised if vertically-aligned panels can absorb some of that reflected light more easily. Depending on the time of day, I could see that contributing more to energy collection than the panels being cooler. Let's face it - the Netherlands isn't exactly a hot country, so it seems a little odd to me their solar panels are suffering _that_ much from heat. 2. If the panels are mounted vertically, surely, it would take little to no effort to just use the same rack to mount a pair of monofacial panels opposing each other. This of course is assuming it's cheaper per KWH to do that rather than use bifacial panels. 3. If your land is long but narrow, you could always just do a tower of vertical panels. Might be difficult to handle strong winds, though. 4. I'm sure you could dramatically improve the light collection by using a white/reflective surface on the ground. A thin layer of small white gravel could be an incredibly cheap way to make a significant performance improvement.
I thought about the reflectiveness of the panels when I saw the thumbnail ;) Would be interesting to see if you can adjust them so the light can better bounce between them. Maybe some kind of slight curve in the panels itself? And the monocrystalline cells for the main side and polycrystalline for the back side to get more energy from the diffuse light. Just some thoughts :)
The other bonus of BVPV in agriculture: you don't really need to restrict to short crops. You can just stilt the panels to be a few feet higher to get over taller crops like corn and sunflower.
The only problem with taller crops will be the over all cost of installing it would out pace the return by a long shot. You are not just talking about getting over the crops, but also having room for everything else as well. Taller the infrastructure the harder it also has to work with weather such as wind, rain, and snow hitting them.
Another bonus for these panels would be in areas that have common large hail storms. this would greatly decrease the impact angle. Downsides, not feasible for a typical residential home
Just got our vertical bifacial panel array installed and commissioned to help power our house. Currently just an 8kW set of paneled. Not even a week of profile and our sky is pretty cloudy. Can't wait to get some time to get some information.
I think if it could be made durable enough, it would make an interesting alternative to a traditional fence. Heck, make them a part of the fence. It really does make sense that heat would be the big variable. People have been water cooling their panels in recent years, so I would think they'd provide some correlation to to idea. Let's see what happens.
Later in the video there is literally some footage of farms that have used vertical solar panels AS the fence itself, even dividing up a small pasture with the panels
@@GodofGHz To be clear, that was what made me think it. But I was thinking more about inside towns and the like and not so... bare. Panels should be able to be integrated stylistically. I just didn't go that far into it because I just woke up and was prepping for work.
There might be a few more advantages: Less dust/snow collection on the vertical surfaces therefore less cleaning/water consumption. Also easier inspection /repair. Easier installation since only one line of support poles are needed
Vertical in situations there is a lot of snow makes sense to keep off the snow, Or northern latitudes were the sun is lower. Or if you need the land for something else since it's a better utilization of space. On the other hand if you have slanted roof slanted panels make sense. And horizonal panels would make sense if you want to shade what underneath from water evaporation. And fixed obstructions (trees, buildings, etc) that block sun from a particular direction can be a factor in orientation of panels too. And so on. So the right answer to what way to orient panels.. it depends on the specific situation.
Vertical panels may work on the side of buildings, but they won't work as fencing due to grass shading the panels, and the risk of damage from animals or mowing the grass. The other flaw in their study is that they are comparing against other fixed panels. Most commercial level installs are using available roof space and vertical will have less panels or wattage per square metre. Generation scale PV Power Plants already use Trackers so are taking advantage of the early morning and late evening sun rays.
Grass doesn't normally grow tall enough to block a significant portion of a fence unless you are growing wild grass and not ever mowing it. Damage due to mowing should also be negligible unless you are using an open wire trimmer.
@@mbartelsm The grass only needs to block the equivalent of one square cell out of the whole panel to reduce the output to 1/3rd or less. And yes that can still be significant for the whole string. On a 1500v 8A string, just blocking 5 cells was enough to reduce the string by 30%. Rocks flying out from under the mower will cause plenty of damage, unless you plan to remove every pebble over 5mm big from a 30 metre border along every string.
Are you planning on setting them 6" or less from the ground? If so, why? Because horizontal or vertical, I'm planning on setting them about 7 feet from the ground. That way they provide shade, and we can move around under them. Could fill most of our back and front yards with them. Only thing stopping me at this point is that we're on the edge of tornado alley. I need a way to bring them down and lay them flat on the ground or preferably wait until I can get flexible ones and wrap them around the mounting posts. Then unwrap them and get them back up after the storm has passed. Don't really want to invest 20-30k to have them rip free and smash into my or my neighbor's house, or end up in the next county, during the next storm.
@@ThisIsATireFire Depends on your location for which sun angle you set them on. And yes wind loading is a massive part of the design process. For some rough numbers, a 1sqm panel sitting between 0-10 deg to a 100kmh wind blowing over the top exerts a 1/2 tonne load on the panel, with similar negative lift as well. If it is completely flat it gets a vibration like a sail fluttering that will destroy the panel, and about 30 deg it starts acting like a wing and tries to lift, obviously a panel that is 90 deg to the wind is going to have a large loading . We didn't work out those loading because it is a silly way to mount panels. If I remember correctly, 15-20 deg was the ideal storage position during a high wind event, but that also depends on the terrain, and surrounding structures and fauna that can make the airflow more turbulent.
Alternatively, you can use panels from French company DualSun, and you get to both harvest thermal energy and improve photovoltaic efficiency by cooling the panels with the liquid that harvest the thermal energy to heat water. DualSun claims that they have the best overall efficiency as they harvest both thermal + photovoltaic energy.
Positive: fewer issues with snow and dust accumulation, and reduced vulnerability to hail damage. Negative: greater vulnerability to wind damage. Also, of course, just as with all other solar power, relying on it means freezing in the dark on cold winter nights, and it will never be as reliable or cost competitive with fossil fuels and nuclear.
I want to install some of these at my home. I'm curious on the outcome as I 've not seen a single video with actual comparison between vertical and "regular" solar panel orientation.
Standard orientation is still going to give you more overall juice. The advantage for these is that they can be placed where standard panel arrays can't. It's not a replacement for standard arrays, but rather an additional way to collect solar. The study that showed the 2.5% improvement was over EXPECTATIONS for the east-west layout, not over standard horizontal panels. Think about a divided highway in the US. The median often isn't wide enough to deploy standard solar. It would be too chunked up. But you could run a line or two of these down the median. Generate a bit of power, add some shade, provide some noise reduction... and all in a space not suited for standard solar. And we've got one helluva lot of highways here.
@@sinocte I already have east/west facing panels. That's the nature of my roof. Make them point south would be far costlier due to have to buy the metallic structure. However, having two peaks out of midday would be really interesting. Also, cloudy/misty days in winter make the production drop. So, at some point I want to make install a couple of vertical bifacials, Then after a year I will be able to make an idea on how good or bad they are compared to just install more in the roof (that would mean change the 4kw agreement to export to the grid, something I'm not keen on doing).
As it turns out Centigrade is not acceptable to the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, the keeper of the flame for the Systeme International or SI, the modern metric system.
Maybe putting a reflector in the ground could help with this setup. Reflective mylar is real cheap and in some sense it should provide some of the benefits of sun tracking without the motors or reap the advantages of two layouts while having only one. However I imagine that the reflector may increase the heat so it might negate that benefit, maybe a dichroic reflector would be ideal. Shame I live in an apartment so I can't test any of that.
@@zanwoi8075 I live in a 3rd floor in a narrow street in a place where it rains from 1/3 to 1/2 of the days of the year, don't have a balcony and not that much window area. Even my chili plants struggle a bit, solar panels would do terrible. I hope to move some time, hopefully to a house with a small terrain for solar panels and other stuff but at best it will take a year or two more.
Vertical seems a lot more convenient for many applications. However, as always, the best solution is multiple solutions. It's nice to have more viable options!
Well one thing is mounting these in a working agricultural field is not going to be popular with farmers. What you don't see is the foundation work and wiring for an install like this. That "B" roll of a tractor mowing between the panels is pure folly. Field equipment does not always go where you expect it to. Matt I would like to see a few "vertical" PVs in your yard.
As Matt said, much higher yield crops than grass would be best between the solar panel rows. Such crops require much smaller and nimble equipment than the tractor pulling that mower... I guess that all foundation and wiring work would not extend more than a foot on each side of the panel... much less even if foundation piles are sufficient... which is probably the case.
I doubt these need much of a foundation, they could probably be driven into the ground with a screw-shaped piling, down three or four feet or so. Having worked on small vegetable and strawberry operations, I think these vertical panels would be great. Wind protection for little transplants would be amazing. I could see the ideal spacing being ~3x 80" beds between vertical arrays. You've got 20' wide alleys and you could do strawberries or divide those beds down to 6 40" beds to do cabbage, cilantro or other vegetables
I see mowers on that tractor that are attached to the front and back. I think you are referring to the American trailer implements that will often track one way or another. Many European model implements are fixed to the power unit.
My guess was ambient light from the surrounding that would not hit a panel that is directly facing the sun. Like from snow or water masses around the vertical panels would get a lot of indirect light. Like vertical panels on a slope facing a lake would be optimal and free from snow during winters.
I have an idea that might even increase that benefit in removing some of the Heat by simply doing panels that have like tube holes going down through between the panels I do two panels together with square tubes to allow air to be drawn up through acting as an air cooler due to convection!
Something I thought about a while ago when my parents got solar fitted was what about a water feed to wash the dust of the panels and cool them down on hot days. But then why not have the solar panels have a jacket built in with a solenoid on the bottom for drainage and one on the top for air bleed, a contact at the top to detect it is full and a water feed line. Then this could be run back to a cooling system that when it detects panel temperatures over 30C shuts the drain valves and opening the bleed valves as the panels fill with water. Once they are full the drain opens and water is pumped around the loop to a radiator. When it gets cold over night they can drain down to a storage tank so they can’t freeze. Or run a antifreeze coolant
My house has a flat roof, and I do need to go up on that roof on a regular basis. I'm also in northern NY state where we at least used to get a lot of snow in the winter. And once there is snow on the roof I'm not going to go up there. All of this means that I'm very reluctant to put horizontal panels up there. If they get covered with snow, there's no way I can go up there and clear off the snow. I knew very little about vertical panels. I knew they existed in some places, but never would have considered them for my house. But I could put a few vertical panels up on my flat roof and I think that'd work quite well. My biggest concern would be with how much wind they might be hit with. Very interesting.
Staring out my window at last night's snowfall, blanketing my horizontal patio but leaving my vertical fence clear ... I can see (as shown in the video) that vertical panels will be intrinsically snow-free. But even with vertical panels, solar is still intermittent, non-dispatchable, and ultimately unreliable. In fact, the political mandates that require our electric grid to give precedence, and pay premium prices, for that intermittent solar and wind power, prove that "intermittent" solar and wind power are disastrous to our energy-based economy.
The fact that vertically mounted panels gets better convection cooling isn't exactly a mystery. Also, if there's plants between the rows of panels, you get evaporative cooling. Desert sand typically has reasonably high albedo, which makes it heat up less from direct sunlight, but the heat that is caught isn't dissipated very well. Salt production in evaporation ponds could be the "ideal" process to combine with solar PV, in some situations, if, the solar systems can be made to handle the salt dust/brine droplets well without becoming too expensive. Solar panels would reduce wind exposure, which evaporation ponds typically rely heavily on, but solar panels could cause a great increase in convection. In short, for solar PV you want the visible light, for evaporation you want the heat. So, while it probably would require some careful considerations/development, there should be potential for net benefit for both processes, besides dual use of land. If nothing else, angled solar panels could be fitted with rain gutters and reduce the amount of rain the reach the ground, making evaporation ponds viable in more areas, and at the same time collect potentially useful rainwater. When solar cells were expensive, making bifacial panels to increase net output just a little bit wasn't such a great idea in most cases. Now, the cells themselves almost an insignificant part of the total system cost, adding solar cells to the back side can very well be worth it, when the panels are to be mounted in a way that the "backside" receives more than insignificant light. And in places where the panels fills some other function where both sides happens to receive meaningful amount of light, why not.
I'm at 8:17 so I don't know if it's addressed, but: another benefit to this orientation is the land around the PV panels is MUCH more usable, for grazing or whatever.
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I have been watching a number of videos about people sailing on catamarans and most of them use bi-facial cells on the back of their boats since so much of the sunlight can reflect off the ocean water.
So the lesson learned is install movable bi-facial solar panels that are automatically optimized for maximum energy output (i.e. before they become too hot, change their tilt & direction sufficiently to compensate for the anticipated undesirable thermal gain. When they cool down, optimize their tilt & direction again for maximum energy generation).
Yes. A relative is furious about solar farms going in the fields within thirty miles of where she lives. She was fine with the massive coal fired smoke stacks which could be seen from far further away as her county is entirely flat aside from one city on a hill (Lincolnshire). Drives me batty. She's got solar on each of the three houses she's built but it's not ok to have it in a field for twenty years. I tried to explain why it's important but she doesn't get it. All she really cares about as a NIMBY is that she can see something that's not pretty. I despair.
I'd say Leipzig with a long "e" sound and closer to "b" rather than "p" it's more fricative than normal English pronunciation but close enough
Probably doesn't need snow scraped off them..
One other huge benefit I see is for big farms, when it snowing you won't have to clear the snow and even dust would stick less on a vertical setup and you can much easier clear grass and can even technically farm it and sell it for livestock.
Good point.....
No snow lying on them might make them last longer?
That's my first thought, maintenance costs would drop a lot
@@bullydungeon9631 could make a very slim roof, maybe with cleaning shower.
Sheeps would keep the grass down.
Ah, that's a great point! I had to clear snow off of my small array this winter which wouldn't have stuck if they were vertical
The reason why vertical panels are cool is not only the lower amount of heat they get but also the amount of convective cooling they get. Vertical panels facilitate the natural flow of heat upwards, while horizontal ones impede it. I.e. the amount of convection per surface area is higher on vertical panels, so they cool better.
Yeah, this seems like a much more obvious potential explanation.
This is what I was thinking. I was also wondering whether or not it would be cost effective to add heatsjnks to the underside of panels in typical horizontal installations.
@@ClaytonMacleod There are some companies doing that. There are others that circulate a heat transfer fluid through the backside of the panels, then you can use that warmed water to pre-heat your DHW so your water heater doesn't need to work so hard.
The heat stack effect depends on the movement of air. This is an absurd explanation that completely fails and it turns out that you guys are not better informed than the actual engineers that design and study these panels, LOL.
@@Will-xk4nm Warm air rises. It can’t not move. There’s a reason passively cooled electronic devices have their heatsink fins oriented vertically. If it didn’t matter they wouldn’t orient them that way. If the air didn’t move they wouldn’t be passively cooled in the first place. They’d need fans. But they don’t have fans. They don’t have fans because the convection from the air being warmed is sufficient to move enough air to cool them. I think every home audio amplifier I’ve ever had, save one, has been a fanless device with heatsinks that have vertically oriented fins. And the sole amp I had over the years which actually did have a fan in it still used vertically oriented fins and only turned the fan on when you were asking for enough power that you’d never hear it over the music you were playing anyway. That you think it is too simple of an explanation doesn’t mean it is incorrect. It might be incorrect, or it might not be. FYI, it is possible to present conflicting information without being a jerk. If that’s your default mode, don’t even bother.
I love the idea of vertical bifacial solar as fences, railings, sound and privacy barriers, and shade structures. This has so much potential!
Or sound barriers on highways.
@@MichalKaczorowski problem i have with sound barriers is it can't be anyway as good as a textured concrete wall.
Only works in places that don't have protest marches, activists, and vandals that are willing to commute to find something valuable to ruin for fun.
@@naekosl3059don't just blindly repeat propaganda, think first!
@@alanhat5252 I envy you can live in an innocent area that allows you to sincerely believe that. You live in the old America I miss. In my area, after the 2020 protests, vandalism is part of the way of life for a certain subculture in my area. As a result, No house in my neighborhood or any neighborhood around it dares display a USA flag because "certain people" will eventually see the USA flag and throw a rock. A few miles from me, there was a car dealership well-known for having a huge USA flag flying from their tall flagpole. The "patriotism is racism" problems back in the 2020 riots forced them to take down the flag because the cars in their lot would get damaged windows constantly. There are basically zero businesses that display a visible USA flag now in my city. Putting up expensive solar fences is just going to stimulate those people into vandalism
It's hard to believe that the TNO study didn't have regular horizontal panels right next to the vertical ones. That makes it super hard to get a apples to apples real world comparison. Knowing the huge variance in solar radiance by location, I'd have a hard time giving this study the credit it would otherwise deserve. Thanks for having all the references in the show notes. Individual panels vary more than the 2-3%, but the fact they even produce close to the horizontal is impressive. Edit: after researching, they don't produce close to horizontal, just 2-3% more than they thought vertical ones would, due to additional cooling from having them mounted that way.
That is a very good point. We need a proper study.
The point wasn't to compare them. The point was to solve the mystery of why they produced more than expected.
he covers that
@@tristanridley1601 Right, but much harder to solve the mystery if you don't have a "control group"
Also Matt gets the meaning of the graph at 7:35 wrong. It's not showing anything "much cooler than their horizontal counterparts" It's just the difference between the modeled vertical vs the actual temperature. Here's the actual graph caption from the paper: "Daily profile of the module temperature: blue solid line shows observed temperatures, red dashed line presents modelled ones, and green dotted line displays ambient temperatures." Not vertical vs horizontal.
This video neatly addresses a key dilemma: I have an asphalt shingle roof that has maybe another decade of life left to it, and I don't really want to put solar on it only to remove it when it comes time to replace the roof. I'm also replacing all my privacy fencing, and I realize I have two long runs that go almost perfectly north-south, making them ideal for rows of vertical solar panels. Meaning that even if I need to purchase several extra panels to meet my total energy needs, the savings on labor and fence materials should more than pay for it.
Even better, this makes my solar installation a DIY process, as there will be no need for any roof-top work. On top of that, I expect to have less maintenance due to less deposition of our insidious San Diego dust that keeps blowing in. Win-win!
Thanks!
Yeah, using these to fence a yard is kinda brilliant. 👍
Yes, but BEWARE the lawn mower throwing debris at the panels. Typical power mowers can throw rocks at least 100 feet/30 meters, including upward trajectories (probably from richochets off the ground).@@serversurfer6169 @flymypg
Flat panels on a roof will extend the life of the shingles as they protect the shingles. But in your case, you might want to check with an installer to get their opinion.
Not much of a dilemma I'd say. I dunno in your case, but at least in my area it's pretty normal for installers to offer free removals for your panels for whenever you need to change your roof. They only have to do it, roughly once every decade twice per house, so it's not a biggy for them to do that.
And it gets rid of another silly petty excuse that people make for themselves to not go solar! Really taking panels off isn't that hard. Don't be lazy! The technical detail is mostly in just in drilling the holes, and making sure all the framing pieces line up and are screwed tight. Once the frame is on the panels just bolt onto it normally.
My panels were disconnected by a handy electrician ( a 2 min job) removed while new roof was put on, then reinstalled and reconnected ( it was just one cable for a lineup of 6 panels.)
One observation I have made is that installing solar panels on roofs over habited rooms made a huge difference in less heat pumped into the building and not only created electricity, but reduced room temps by 15 degrees! That means a HUGE savings in cooling that room! I live in a desert, sooo.. I am going to vertically mount some of my panels on south and west walls with stand off from the wall to allow convection to take away the heat and not transfer it into my walls... double improvement with reduced load on my cooling system AND cooler walls while I collect energy!!! 👍👍👍 Any cooling I don't have to do is a huge savings!! Yes, I'm kinda screwed in winter, cuz my walls won't get sun, but my cost is 8 months of cooling, not 4 months of heating. Now to gather data before the install!
Tried just painting your roof white....
Seems obvious: any hot, sunny, and wealthy climate should be doing this. I'm looking at you, Arizona.
@@vovalos , doesn't get you any electricity.
Use reflective film below panels. Double energy, double cooling. And in winter you can try covering that with black matter.
Yeah and now set them on rails or something that you can move them 2 meters away from the wall and you have a solution for the whole year. :)
My dad worked installing chain-link fences. I grew up going to work with him and he showed me that when you leave the 6 foot 30 pound iron digger bar lying on the ground in the sun , when you go to pick it up you can’t touch it it’s too hot however if you leave it leaning against something or stabbed into the ground at a 90° angle it’s fine it’s just warm. I never really thought about this phenomenon till now perhaps the surface is getting the same amount of light but less heat when it’s vertical.idk
It isn't the same amount of light/heat, the maximum is when the angle is near 90* and it goes to 0 when you reach 180/0*. The panels in the video don't get the same amount of light during all times of the day as a tilted panel, they get less at all times of the day, but they make up for it to get a small 2.5% benefit.
In Alberta you can’t pick it up because it is frozen to the ground.
Think of it like this, if you lift a cook pot lid straight up vs lifting and tilting. The tilted lid lets the condensation run off quickly. It's the same with heat. Heat wants to rise so creates faster air flow up the side of a more vertical surface so better cooling. Also roofs are (sometimes by 50F) hotter than ground level air temps but roofs often get best access to direct sun. Lots of factors.
Now imagine that 6 foot long bar being an automobile hood that's painted dark brown. In August, in the South.
I couldn't get my hand closer than 6 inches from my grandmother's car, but could hold my hand against my grandfather's white car for about 30 seconds.
Same as grass, grows better onder a tree in dapled shade, too much sun and photosynthesis is reduced.
This is a great example of accidental biomimicry. Some species of termites build flat east west facing mounds to prevent overheating and to capture the early and late sunshine for the thermoregulation of their mounds.
I'd be willing to bet if we make them smaller and put them on towers to allow them to flap around freely that we might even see better results. Have them all connect to the middle tower and run all the power down to a central bundle in the ground.
Love both of these comments 🫡🙏🏼🙏🏼
@@jaerin1980a flag set up gets the best of both worlds, better cooling, no static shadow like VBPV, no dust like horizontal PV and less chance of pest infestation eating or damaging wires. No dew from moisture either
Biomimicry for the win!
Maybe we need leaf like panels that imitate trees
In college, we created a photovoltaic panel with water flowing behind it to cool the panel. It created hot water and an increase in the output of the panel. I’m not sure why this isn’t being used more now but it’s a similar concept. A cooler panel equals more electricity.
Yeah that is strange that isn’t being done more. It takes a lot of energy to heat water and if you get more energy by doing it, why wouldn’t you?
Hybrid solar panels do exist, but they need some specific installation: a big water tank to store the hot water and water heaters. A lot of people don't want ton invest on thoose, that's probably why they are not that popular. I also eard they where not that good but don't know exactly why (efficiency? twice the problems on one device?) I'm part of an association renovating a house and we decided to put separated thermal and photovoltaic panels for maximum efficiency.
more complex and more expensive leading to higher maintenance, install and purchase costs
@oliverpolden Building a TV with a built-in VCR seemed like a good idea, too... But, added features are always added points of failure...
That’s true but it seems to be such a synergistic feature that the increased complexity would be worth it, in my opinion.
I discovered this years ago when I adjust my panels a set of my panels to a 72 degree orientation for more power over winter.
When summer came along I got lazy and didnt readjust them to 32 degrees for summer with the rest of my sets. I found my voltages were producing SLIGHTLY less current, but voltages during peak heat was about 10V more. I was getting an extra 200W from that set as a result. I ended up leaving the panels where there were at. They got less dust collection and when snow hit I melted off much faster
Maybe the ideal orientation overall is somewhere between the latitude angle and vertical orientation.
I was wondering about this! It seems there should be an optimal angle, perhaps calculated as a function of the ambient temperature at any given moment along with the panel's internal temperature (but within the bounds of the adjustment mechanism).
@@jerells vertical convection obviously creates a chimney effect
Interesting
Wonder how much extra adding in earth batreries underneath would harvest on off hours. My other thought being its probably easier to dual use the land around panels this way, easier to put crops, plumbing, or landscaping around.
You didn’t even mention the reduction in hail damage, bird droppings, dust, snow. Also this seems like a great place for tiny prism glass. I don’t know what it’s called exactly.
At least in the case of utility solar, O&M teams will tilt the panels as vertical as possible to avoid hail damage currently and to rinse the panels during rain.
I think you mean fresnel lenses?
3:25 42*
You get way less bird droppings, dust, snow, hail damage, true, but higher risk of damage / dirt when mowing lawn, doing gardening, etc. I have vertical solar array on the house facade and I had to replace one panel because it got hit by a stone shot from the lawnmower. From then I only use trimmer. But I still not regret it, ones needs to be more careful as the panels are closer to human activity.
Hail doesn't just drop straight down. Often siding is destroyed during hailstorms.
My point is !! Any solar panel working to charge a phone or a battery is better than taking from the grid !! There are lots of people doing these videos, but when I come across your one, I always watch them as you’re very interesting very smart, very intelligent, not boring at all !! Cheers from Port Hedland Western Australia !! I am fully off grid !! 😎
I live in northern Montana and I put up vertical panels 2 years ago. They have been performing very well in the snow. They never collect snow and ice so I don't have to clean them.
Great upside
I did too on my wall just for the ease of it all in MN it all gets 4hrs sun no matter but that's all a guy can expect I still have 10 panels in the box , playing and testing 16 100 w panals gotta learn yourself it seems electricians don't work with them much but have the knowledge but I'm a sider 😂😊
So it makes sense to me to put them on as siding 😆 😂
@@rp9674what!! Is that bifacial ones!!
@@timkneiski9919I don't think it matters, by facial only take light on one side
In the paper "Thermal model in digital twin of vertical PV system helps to explain unexpected yield gains", it says
"The adjusted value for Uc leads to a 2.5% higher annual energy yield and higher performance ratio, partially offsetting the energy loss due to the less than optimal configuration.".
Not that the vertical angle is better than the optimal angle as the video kind of implies. The production of the optimal angle is far greater than the 2.5% gained from extra cooling.
For agrivoltaics this is still kinda interesting and good information.
I think the fact that vertical solar panel energy generation aligns more closely with energy demand is also a bit plus. Since it reduces the need for energy storage. The overall loss in efficiency may still be worth it if the cost of more panels is less than installing more energy storage.
@ayesaac And the cooling can be used for heating somewhere else where it could be useful.
Yes, this was my thought too - well expressed. The regular tilted panels can also have a benefit to livestock in agrivoltaics as it gives them places to shelter from the sun or rain/snow.
@@cherubin7th I had a thought during that moment in the video, "what's engineering or physics problem is preventing harvesting that heat for useful energy?" Probably can't run a turbine off that (Maybe?) but perhaps offset heating costs with the proper set-up in a small home.
If nothing else, harvesting it and moving it elsewhere would help with the hot-panels problem.
@ayesaac Yes, I would agree. For example, you can use panels from French company DualSun, and you get to both harvest thermal energy and improve photovoltaic efficiency by cooling the panels with the liquid that harvest the thermal energy to heat water.
I can see it being better in northern areas like here in Canada. In the dead of winter, the suns angle is much, much lower than in the summer. Plus, the snow won't build up, and the snow reflects a lot of the sun. This is awesome
Real big win of this is snow immunity.
Second big win is those of us scared of heights and can't get on our roofs will find these easy to clean as just fence panels.
Uh. Not sure if this is going on roofs
@@Chazinthius On flat roofs they would. And the square mileage of large flat or nearly flat roofs (factories, warehouse, agricultural hangars, shopping malls, apartment buildings, many hotels, etc) is huge. In France, where I live, a statistic is made of it, it is called the "grands toits" (large roofs) area, and it stands at around 3000 km2. If all equipped with solar panels... which should be technically very easy, it would generate more electricity annually than the total French power consumption, would take zero land away from agricultural or other uses, and would have negligible esthetic or other negative impacts.
@@st-ex8506 but why would you put this on your roof when you could put it anywhere else on your property where it would effectively double as a fence? Fencing is expensive, and a pain to install. if you get a fence and electricity generation out of the same object, big win.
@@tonydeveyra4611 Not everyone has a garden to be fenced. I do, and a 10 acre one at that, but it is delimited by hedges, not by fencing... not good for PV panels, but excellent for the biodiversity!
I was talking of flat roofs of large buildings, not of those of family houses.
@@tonydeveyra4611 I didn't mean to imply they should go on roofs, more that you don't have to go on the roof because they can be a fence.
But also, kids, kids break things. Someone will pass your fence and throw a rock at it.
Using vertical panels for a fence or wall (as shown in the video) is an intriguing concept. Especially out west where everyone's home is separated by barriers of some sort.
I've been off-grid solar at home for more than a decade in Canada. In winter when the suns angle is barely above the horizon the "optimal" panel tilt is already close to vertical. I've been running my panels vertical for the last few years while there is snow on the ground and see better output. I've been attributing these increased outputs to the combination of reflection off of the snow on the ground and the lack of accumulation of snow/frost on the face of the panels. With the ambient temp below freezing the cooling is probably having an effect as well. On a -30C sunny day the array exceeds it's rated output significantly.
so, after some reading, I think these only generate more power than traditional PV installations once you get pretty far north, like the nordic countries, Canada, and Russia, because then the sun stays close to the horizon most of the time, and rises and sets much farther north.
On the other hand, these are really good for reducing the need for grid storage (and gas peaker plants) because the double peak in the morning and evening is complementary with regular monofacial PV to flatten out the overall solar power generation curve. With how cheap solar is, that alone seems like a great reason to use vertical bifacial PV in more places, especially on houses and in residential areas where power usage at noon is very low anyway.
If you live Florida, power demands are the highest around noon.
You can actually simulate and replicate these findings easily! At globalsolaratlas open 3 tabs. One with south-facing 20 degrees panels, and two with East/West-facing vertical panels. Add-up the annual kWh and you'll see that it's producing more, especially in summer. Multiply one of the numbers by 0.9 (what their paper assumes) or 0.8 (what I have) for 90% bifaciality. I tried this with UK. The winter numbers are terrible, but the summer ones are even better than before.
According to Over easy solar AS ( if I read their sales pitch correctly ) vertical panels only generates about 50% of a horizontal panel, but the 50% is more than previously expected. and those test are in Oslo (equivalent to the southern part of Alaska) it will probably get worse if you install in further south. The way I read the underlying papers it looks more like they expected a 70% loss compared to normally installed panels ando only got 50% loss. A huge boost from what was expected but still a 50% loss over all.
@@JoppeOSL Actually it's 50%+50% gain, even before the cooling factor.
I have two sets of panels (for various reasons). One is optimized for summer and are pretty flat, the other is optimized for winter and are pretty vertical. Vertical panels in the summer here would be useless. The winter panels are almost useless because of the short days and cloud cover (even though its a desert). I still think solar is a novelty, too unreliable for an real application, it just knocks the electric bill down (on good months).
Just to point out... you can grow tomatoes in Florida under partial cover but not in full-day direct sunlight. There are lots of areas of the world where the efficiency of combustion based power generation actually drops off and many of the staple food crops need some protection from elements. So while I doubt the vertical panels would help tomatoes in Florida since they're reflecting and emitting the heat radially back to the ground.... they would be able to produce not only wind shadows but also reduce some evaporation, windscour and increase fertility drift collection. The main concern is simply ensuring they're made with material that can be cleaned by absolutely crop-safe chemistry.
Would be great if water is enough to clean them. Then you can clean the panels and water the plants in one go.
You entire comment sounds odd. Solar panels surfaces are plastic or glass. The material doesn't really dictate if you can clean them with just water. The stuff you are cleaning of matters, dust could be cleaned with a soft cloth, but if it's like tree sap you can't really just use water.
Deionised water should clean most things off, what are you doing putting solar panels where trees would shade them.
some heat is removed by air convection upwards.
IMO there's a lot of space for tuning. Like making them taller with a space for the air at the bottom. Using reflective paint on the ground...
I have just taken my average small semi-detached house with limited land OFF-GRID, it has been hard work and in mid winter I have to be frugal. But two things nobody seems to think of is Cleaning/Maintenance and Snow coverings. One thing I will be fitting to make winter easier is vertical panels on my walls, some are of the type that have better low light performance. My advice to people is you really need panels on all elevations. One big problem I have is sunny winter mornings I have not currently got any panels that can harness this energy and what I find is in the winter frequently has the day progresses the moisture builds up in the atmosphere, clouds form in the winter sky by the time my other panels would normally be exposed. Yes fit South facing panels to start, but use West facing panels to catch the late evening summer sun so that you have plenty of power to run the washing machine when you get home from work. In the summer my North facing elevation is actually very well illuminated late evening, and I still do not have any panels to catch it. Multiple panels, multiple positions, multiple charge controllers, so that if one burns out you have plenty of built in redundancy in the system. Not yet got into wind, I expect to get a small useful amount on bad windy dark days, but not a lot from a small urban wind turbine, my other venture will be in Thermal electric to generate small power from my wood stove. A good idea is to think of your house has your own micro grid system, when sizing stuff, work out what loads would be useful and what amount of wind or solar could power those loads. Create multiple micro systems so if one goes down you always have back up. I actually have a rare old 12 volt only Petrol generator, so far this winter it has probably now consumed £20 worth of fuel, pitch that against the truly obscene standing charges, I used to pay for of £35 a month and its a no brainer.
local conditions permitting, one could also consider creating reflective surfaces which re-direct sunlight onto some of the solar panels earlier / later in the day.
like one commenter earlier wrote -
they get extra yield from reflections off a nearby lake as well as a shiny nearby roof.
another (albeit small) power source for blackout preparation or off grid living,
especially when resources from solar + wind may dwindle during prolonged bad weather conditions:
exercise treadmills attached to generators (I've seen TH-cam videos where people used old car alternators)
heat generating appliances such as washing machines, power showers, kettles could be supplied with pre-heated water from stoves /fireplaces, which should reduce electric demand drastically if that were previously used to heat all the water.
Ans; Active solar heating.... Yeah. You're welcome.
Just use separate controllers for different angles and take advantage of the sun for more hours in the day, with larger scale 3 or 4 controllers can work better than one big one that gets too hot, you have X storage at some point it fills the earlier and later in the day power is full the more you have at night
We did a nearly vertical PV install that had reflected light from a lake and a metal roof.
In the Winter, we had three suns pumping sunlight onto the array.
( i.e. Direct sun, reflected sun from the roof, and reflected sun from the water. )
The yields on the array were the same in the Summer and the Winter.
how long was the day during summer vs winter and what were the peak outputs of the panels?
Nice use of location specific mounting
Love your channel!
As a sheep rancher I want to see more sheep grazing amongst these vertical solar farms, sheep are optional in converting weeds & grasses to protein and wool! Keep up the great work!
Your sheets would also have some shady places to rest on a hot sunny day...
could probably do cattle, too. The issue with using cattle in traditionally angled PV installations, as I've heard from agrivoltaic expects, is that the cattle are just too tall to fit under the panels. Not an issue with vertically oriented panels, and there's a lot more cattle in the US than sheep--not that I don't like lamb, both are delicious!
Shout out sheep milk
@@sagetmaster4 running a dairy operation on some kind of agrivoltaic field would be...next level challenging. Solar grazing probably only works for meat animals.
If you let your chickens follow up after your sheep, you'll get an increase in carbon absorption into the earth which gives a higher yield in your next crop of grasses.
Engineer here (mechanical, focus on renewable energy)
I really like how this configuration overlaps with demand because the biggest problem with solar energy will remain to be storage. Added efficiency helps, and this sure adds different opportunities in installment methods and plans, but I feel like the core issues are still unaddressed
Vertically stacking them like a tower sounds like a nightmare to deal with when different levels of shading are taken into account which tends to have catastrophic effects on output, but the idea of having panels integrated in plots of land doing other things seems very effective. I see the potential here (despite shading issues)
Storage is key or it's just dumping off grid your right.
If you catch it you gotta keep it or let it go 😂 why catch it then.
I've got enough panals it's storing it for me.😊
Batteries are the key and sodium will replace lithium fast watch lithium drop
I’ve contacted two contractors for a ground based array. They both were perplexed I didn’t want them on my roof. I’m glad I waited.
I'm also more interested in a ground array. I may eventually put them on my roof too, but if we have the space and it's just grass I don't see why we shouldn't use it first. Provided it's a good location etc
I agree. I'd prefer a ground based array. Easy to clean Cheap to install. Snow doesn't stick when vertical. Go for it.
@@corkkyle he did NOT say vertical
I prefer installing ground mounts
I am absolutely NOT putting them on my roof! EVERY hole (screw/wiring) will eventually leak! Ground-based is easier to maintain and adjust... plus better cooling!
I live in Tokyo and have a small 1kw solar system on my balcony. The temperatures in Japanese summertime can reach 38c degrees in the shade. In the sun probably closer to 50c. I have 9 x 110w panels running in parallel which are Shingled all black modules which of course means they get scourging hot. If you then consider that panels generally are tested in a 25C environment to grade them, it quickly becomes a problem. A voltage drop of 0.08v each degree over 25 means a 2volt drop pr panel in my case in the summer(assuming that the panels are 50c. They are likely hotter I have not measured.) And I can tell you the performance suffers for it like 50% on the entire system almost, however as soon as there is a breeze performance goes up a lot.
PV designers should put a bit more effort into heat sinks or heat storage to pipe away all that nearly boiling water for alternative uses.
Imagine if all of the units in your building had the same setup with the same heat gain but all piped to a hot water storage system that could then be used for laundry, showers, ect. Cools your panels and would be almost free.
I suspect that the undersides of all panels needs to be black in hot climates to radiate heat from the panel. I suspect that is part of the reason for the increase in efficiency for the vertical panels.
Add a small PC fan to the bottom of each of them
What if you pump cold well water up to your panels and potentially even use the heat for something else?
@@gameratortylerstein5636 It already exists as hybrid panels. The odd is that it's much more complicated solution and it's not suitable in areas with cold winters. You would need to use glycol instead water etc.
i experimented with this myself. i put it down to the panels being much cooler(up to 15 degrees c) when not aimed at the australian sun directly.
Edit: i was looking for longevity from the panel not a voltage increase. i thought keeping it cooler may make it last a little longer.
So you get a few percent more energy from them,...
1) I would hope so, they have TWICE the collecting area
2) what is the additional cost of bifacial solar cells?
3) seeing as they cannot have a blocking mechanical back support, are they less durable, or more expensive to make? (I'd also expect that vertical mounts, only secured at bottom are a right nightmare in high hinds, requiring more substantial mounting hardware)
Also, the fact that these researchers didn't even set up an actual bifacial array AND a "control" latitudinally oriented arrray is extremely suspect.
This sounds great for Canadian winters - no more snow removal.
Or Coloradoan winters
Eh I think snow would still pile up on the side facing the prevailing wind.
But will they hold up against the wind?
I have mount my solar panels vertically and is working great. A real benefit is that dirt, tree leaves and snow cannot cover the panels. The first time I notice this was at the time I built a veranda outside and cutting many pieces of wood. The wood cutting dust was everywhere, on any horizontal surface, except on the panels.
There are already solar panel banks installed vertically in Finland. Some residential apartment buildings might have their entire south wall covered in solar panels. It doubles as a surface cover, produces electricity and there is no problems with bird poo, autumn leaves, winter snow, or dust and other dirt. Another huge benefit in Norway, Finland, Canada etc. is that the vertical solar panels actually produce some power in the winter. Because the sun is so low for the whole day in the deep winter normally tilted panels, which are usually always low and covered in snow, don't produce much power. It's also much cheaper and easier installing and maintainin panels on a wall rather than on a roof. (Roofs in these northern countries are often rather steep due to snow loads and high rain accumulation). Solar panels are dirt cheap. The installation, electronics and electrical components are much more expensive. It just makes sense adding 100% extra panels for a vertical installation just for the heck of it if you have the space.
I wouldn't really say that Solar panels are "dirt cheap". Maybe for industry, government, etc but not for the average person. Otherwise, I agree with the rest of your excellent post.
The great majority of Canadians live south of Berlin. Toronto is south of Avignon. Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory is up there with Helsinki. It's a small town.
As you explained part of how BVPVs work is because light is reflected off snow/roof/next solar panel onto the a solar panel. This reminds me of a years-old ad about a guy who paired 2 single-sided solar panels into a horizontal V shape so reflected light would bounce between the faces of the 2 panels. Because each ray of light hit each panel multiple times more of it was converted into electricity instead of being lost as reflected light. He claimed this significantly improved the electricity generation. He racked multiple "V"s into a vertical column thus reducing both racking needs and required space. He researched the most efficient angle of the V and for a nominal fee would send you his findings. I can't remember his name. Please investigate if this is true and is anyone doing it.
I remember reading something about this years ago. Pretty sure it was the same thing you saw, because I remember that plans could be purchased. No idea if it would really work like he claimed, but I remember that my hunch at the time was that it would collect more energy per area of ground covered, but likely would collect less energy per panel.
Got 9.8kW PV on the south facade, 90°, on the wall. Best thing ever. Much more in the winter, no snow and no unneeded peak in the summer compared to the roof PV. Living at 52°N.
how much real life kw do you get out of your system in mid summer and mid winter ?
@@casemodder89 Its around that what PVGis says (tool to calculate PV with location and alignment). Theres nothing on cloudy days, but a bit of sun has double the yield of the same PV size on the E/W roof. Living at 52°N. 70° south would de ideal here for best year round PV.
That's very interesting, we are studying to install solar panels in our winery vineyard in Catalonia, and maybe this vertical design could be a great solution. It allows us to work easily through the rows of vines, and also if they are installed properly and we adapt the orientation of the panels to project its shadow to the vines, it could give more fresh temperatures allowing the plants to rest during the hours of major sunlight incidence and help to decrease the temperature of the plants during summer hot months. Thx for the useful information Matt.
and spread white chippings on the ground for reflection too?
Coming to the end of the video, we have the same problems in SA, cost/W of a bifacial PV MODULE is +/- 4 times the cost of a normal unit, with only an average reported 20% increase in yield, however mounted in a traditional way. Mounted vertically is then 22.5%? while being 4 times as expensive doesn't quite make super sense. We have done an experiment on a building, where we put bifacial panels on a horizontal lattice running up and through convection underground, pulls up cool air across them which worked well until the vacuum and modules were broken by a grass cutter hitting a stone hahaha, but worked great on keeping voltage high
I live in Vietnam, we have lots of sunlight and horizontal solar panels installation. It's a second roof that takes a few degrees off the roof. We don't clean the panels, Vietnam coastal wind & rainy season cleans them. The only concern is supports needs rust control.
My guess is temperature of the panel. Of course I had panels for years and know a cool sunny day produces more then a hot sunny day. This sounds great for crops and solar combo!
In Northern climates, us off griders can never get enough out of our solar panels in the winter. A vertical panel wouldn't easily be covered with snow for days at a time like min do now, and get more reflectivity from the snow on the ground. For such situations I would think the primary face should point south due to the low angle of the sun.
4:05 good job. I know bifacial but they never mentioned this advantage until now. So you basically get good generation in the early morning and late afternoon but not noon. A side effect of this, due to less peak generation, you don't need to buy a powerful inverter just to capture a short peak of power generation around noon. Inverter cost is being left behind the rapid drop of solar panel prices. Additionally, in solar farms, you don't need a tracker that adds costs-we just need a large solar farm or solar pv company to confirm this.
Sadly, for most residential installations, a vertical bifacial is not practical.
One aspect only touched on here and not really fleshed out is the financial return for the more demand-correlated output of vertical farms. Power distribution pay (at least where we are) quite fluid rates that match their demands, its why the addition of batteries pay back far more than you'd think. While the total energy capture might be only 2.5% higher, the distribution better matching the higher rates you can get is actually a far bigger impact on ROI. We have done simulations based on data from the same study (those charts were horrifyingly familiar seen outside of a work context!) and almost 15% more money can be had, and that was presuming some very conservative price tracking. If you are considering a small-scale farm or even a domestic situation where you can sometimes get very variable reverse tariffs, you might see more like 30% gains by distributing double-skin panels vertically. One interesting side note though - if you do have the 20% higher up front costs (which almost all go into the structure by the way, not the panels which can be very similar from some suppliers), then you are still better off with putting that in storage, assuming the gains you want to make are from variable-tariff sale prices, and that's simply because the demand curve is not just at the beginning and end, its outside the beginning and end of the sunny times, and to get the supply to match that, well you need batteries - but if you have em, and have the wits to carefully control them, you can get a huge payback.
In architecture school, we were taught to design according to sun exposure (Amongst other factors). So the vertical solar panels actually don’t surprise me. This was such a fun video. Thanks for sharing this info with your audience.
This is fascinating to me. I'm in Florida where you'd think everyone would have solar, but the insurance companies won't write homeowner policies if you have panels on your roof. We are currently building a home and now I'm wondering about the effectiveness of vertical panels in the back yard or as a fence line. Thanks for sharing this.
FPL has really pushed back against solar, for decades now. Looks like they are letting the insurance companies take the brunt of the blame.
Check another insurance provider
There's still insurance companies in Florida?
There is a company in Norway make PV balcony railing...
Norway is further north, and energy prices and energy demand is higher in the winter.
On the other hand, east west panels can benefit from the higher evening cost of electricity...
LOL, not many! @@Vaeldarg
Vertical Solar Thermal has been used for heating water for years now. So it's kind of weird it never took off more.
Thermal solar has an objective to catch heat (infrared) which is the opposite point of this objective to catch high frequency photonic energy ( UV) while staying within a cool temperature so as not to lose efficiency in electricity. So vertical is not the best optimization for thermal according to this discovery.
@@Dana5775 the real winner would be a combined system that cooled off the panels by transferring the heat to the water
@@drillerdev4624 Many farmers would be irrigating their fields with some sort of sprinkler system. Building the sprinklers directly into the same structure as the solar panels would make a lot of sense.
@@drillerdev4624 We use water and cooling towers in large buildings/etc because of energy savings but small buildings are not worth the initial expense and maintenance costs. A 50sq.ft solar panel would get hot enough to make steam, using hundreds of gallons of water +/- a week. Running a cooling tower is a nasty, biohazard requiring biocides, PH adjustments, so constant monitoring and mineral buildup (scale) and daily water dumps. A home hot water tank would be overwhelmed with this load.
@@Dana5775 Alternatively, you can use panels from French company DualSun, and you get to both harvest thermal energy and improve photovoltaic efficiency by cooling the panels with the liquid that harvest the thermal energy to heat water.
I use a vertical panel with an ultraclear glass in front and a fan for 2 years. Temperature of the air is up to 60 C, normally 30-40 C. Like Trombe wall with a photovoltaic panel. In summer hot air can heat water, I shall test it next summer.
Matt, i think you missed 1 big disclaimer of this study. The Panels perform better than expected for their *orientation*. It is still better to mount the same Panels in an "optimal" Position for Max Overall Power.
Still there are good reasons for mounting them vertcal.
Typical quality for this channel🙄
If that's true that is extremely important to mention.
@@javaguru7141 True
@@Claritism i think its assumed that they are not more efficient overall. But its interesting theyre significantly more efficient than expected.
I can only say how pleased I was to see a black engineer explaining things to a white blue collar...about time the diversity became a reality...the sad part was both were males.
The vertical orientation helps regarding weather, too! No snow build up, for starters. Hail storms are another by minimizing surface area exposed to falling ice. No leaf build up and less dust build up. I can see some really good advantages here.
you forgot to mention bird poo.
One shortcoming is probably drag, though. Vertical panels would be a lot mor susceptible to wind damage than horizontal. You probably wouldn't want to install them in high places like the rooftops of towers.
@@QuesoCookies True. Though they wouldn't suffer from lift, however (say, from a microburst in tornadic areas - the stuff that pulls roofs off, but doesn't knock walls down).
@@QuesoCookies yeah... Oslo must not have blizzards. Or hurricanes.
Solar panel fences are the future, got it! Also solar panel roads, solar roofs, solar walls, solar windows, solar cars, solar everything.
I’m a truck driver in the USA and I’ve noted many large solar panel fields installed the past couple years. None look like they are assembled like this. All are laying at angle toward the sun. I guess the modern version has not made it here yet.
If these double as a fence or noise barrier, they should be less costly with the stacked functions
If railways use this they don't even have to use fossil based electricity to run trains.
@@benjiro8793 Presumably they'd still be grid connected, but this would be a more direct way of getting the power, when available.
Using the land for shade tolerant plants is one way of approaching it. Another is to use the system to provide partial shade in otherwise desert conditions. Depending on how far apart tie rows are, you can limit the maximum direct sun. You could even plant different varieties different distances from the shade. Likewise, you could use the system, along with an open-cycle ground-water cooling loop and do three things- warm the ground itself as a hedge against frost, make the panels more efficient, and also facilitate irrigation. If you built extra strong foundations on the edges of a field, and suspended loads in tension, you could manage extreme winds by pivoting off the base while anchored, allowing the mass of the panels to dampen otherwise overwhelming pressure. In low wind, you relax tension and let the panels rest on the ground. You still have to build a line of supports along the way to collectively prevent swaying. You’d also use cross supports between rows. If plan for it, you could manage extreme wind by lifting the panels so they feather free, then lower the common cable again to confine the movement of the panels such that they remain in contact with the ground (likely killing some plants). The less effect the worst wind can do, the lighter and cheaper the whole can be. There would be advantages if the field posts required no permanent foot.
East-west vertical solved another problem for me on my farm - the vertical panels are not as ugly as conventional.
Should help moderate wind speed at ground level, and therefore increase crop yields and reduce water demand in most climates, too.
You think like a raised 4 panel array is ugly but these lifeless straight line columns aren't?
My understanding of beauty is in direct contrast to you it seems and I can obsess for unhealthily long chunks of time over flat straight and true, but, as they say, straight lines don't exist in nature and in buildings can easily lead to that sickly institutionalized feeling. I think vertical can have a place but I'm a HUUUGE fan of garden partitions and privacy screens and even with that, on their own, vertical panels look anemic and uglier than shit.
I don't like panels on any roof that isn't south facing but thats cuz I think it's inefficient. Putting a post in the ground and panels 8ft above you isn't going to be cutting into most people's freedom of movement (assuming you have the space). Panels can even be arranged to look like flower petals opening up. Idk man, I'm really trying to understand here and I'm just coming up short
Do you think giant windmills are ugly too? Because the majority of people think they look freaking awesome.
If we were 18th century Dutch, would you have been against those windmills going up too? Progress is appealing, exciting. Conserving has a place, but if it's trying to conserve old customs that have no real reason to exist (like infant mutilation) beyond tradition, just accept that your ways are in the outs, in just the same way as your generation did to a number of your parents mores.
@@Mix1mum
Yup, I have pedestal ground mounts, too, on the farm site, and they look fine. Easier to maintain than roof mounts, too. But in the fields, these east-west bifacial verticals will look much better than a field full of south mounts. The fields full of south mounts on dirt where nothing grows cause shade, usually surrounded by a chain link fence - these arrays are a blight.on the countryside. Better than a coal plant, certainly, but I like the promise of this simple innovation for farm country.
Should swing in the force of wind reducing structure. Also don't have to be directly east/west facing. Use NREL SAM. agrisoltaics with two S's
@@energyideas
That is too cryptic. What are you saying?
I love the idea of adding solar to existing areas collaboratively, eg. the highway barriers (here in QLD Australia we have so much sun and so many stretches of highway).
Hmm.... great idea, but
most QLD politicians are pushing to do away with renewables & re-embrace coal, gas & fossil fuels ?????
& they say climate change is a myth...
The " Graffiti artists " would have a great time I'm sure.
I didn't put my guess in the comments, but I guessed right.
I have studied plant biology at the graduate level and its funny how this is similar to some of the tradeoffs plants have to deal with. Most plants photosynthesize at lower efficiency as the temperature goes up. This is both because of lowered enzymatic activity but also because high temperatures cause water to burn off too fast (causes leaf burns, xylem cavitation, general dehydration) -- plants respond by closing their stomata which slows the rate of carbon fixation.
Plants employ lots of different strategies to increase their efficiency by reducing heat. These include white wax and hairs, as well as more vertical leaf surfaces, such as in many monocots when they are drought stressed.
I think solar engi
If they are mounted in an open field anyway, one could also mount them on hinges (one plastic bearing left and right, and connected top and bottoms + a drive motor) and just flip them horizontal in the middle of the day. This would reduce the dip in the middle of the day at minimum cost.
even better just automatically track the sun!
Then you return to the issues with overheating. It's also way, way more complexity in the setup, extra energy use, more stuff that needs maintenance and that can break... Doesn't really make much sense.
@@amunak_look at the graph at 3:52 the vertical east west panels (green line) have a massive dip in the middle of the day. Flipping the panels horizontal would certainly lead to higher temps and thereby lower efficiancy (for that time) but it would fill the gap abd probably cause a quite constant output over the day. And the mechanics aren't that fifferent from the window openers in greenhouses which do work with verry low maintenance.
After seeing this video I went out and separated two of my new BYD bifacials (the biggest panel they make) ran one vertically and one at 36 degrees south. Both were sent through a shunt and then the + and - where connected. When it got dark I went out and checked and the vertical panel produced almost half of what the panel set to my latitude did. My guess is this study was done so far north that the optimal orientation was closes to vertical with Norway being at the 66-69 degree latitude.
I have an island system with just 360 Watts peak + 6kWh storage for emergency supply. Modules are vertically mounted SE and SW (defined by the building). On sunny days I get roughly 0.7 kWh in winter and 0.8 kWh in summer - vertical orientation is a good equalizer between summer and winter gains. For emergenca power the winter is more important than the summer and in typical societies the power demand is higher during winter. So in general: Vertical mounting has lots of benefits but maybe a good mixture is the way to go which shapes the power generation graph more like the demand graph. The rest can be done by batteries, at least on a 24 h time scale.
I am telling this to everybody for more than 2 years about VanLife and people putting their solar panels on their rooftops. Each morning, evening, and especialy during european winter, the sun is not up here, it is more horizontal !
Finally someone getting it 😂❤❤
Yes you will be getting more power when you need it. At noon in midsummer is not when the power is most needed.
On the other hand for anyone else than solar farms this setup is unusable due to objects obstructing the light. Friends of mine were tinkering with the setup a few years ago and they ended with a 45° angle even in our conditions approximately 60° is best but there were trees, buildings etc.
Who knew that pointing the panel at the sun would be a good idea
Would it be better on the sides?
Cooler temperatures improve panel efficiency. I've heard about that before. I believe here in France there is a panel manufacturer that runs water piping on the back of the panel to transfer heat from the panel into the water, thus cooling the panel and warming the water. This warmed water then feeds into the hot water supply of the building, saving some energy on water heating.
One detail not discussed that is very relivant - if you factor in the time of day value of energy generated vertical PV modules might be financially much better than horizontal. Even considering when battery storage is added into the equation minimizing generation of electrical energy in the middle of the day when the spot price might be negative is a major factor to consider.
Turns out motorized mounts can get the best of both worlds to maximize returns. Angle perfectly until the critical temperature is reached, then adjust to east west vertical orientation until temperature drops back to optimal temperatures. Rinse and repeat. Definitely adds complexity and more maintenance to the system, but could work wonders for efficiency!
than questions is if cost efficent as well addeding that complexity
Motorised mounts are more expensive than just getting more panels these days. I have a location where I was thinking of motorised because the panels can't be roof mounted, but it's shockingly expensive compared to a static mount. The idea of a vertical mount is very interesting to me because it is potentially even easier than a traditional sloped mount, because its mounted like a fence panel with just two end posts (subject to wind loading).
Brilliant idea. but It should be done as DYI e.g. using cheap SOC like ESP32 and clever servo mount otherwise it would be too expensive.
what about mounting it at the top hanging down and the servo at the bottom tilting in +- 15 degrees at forenoon and then afternoon. Right in the morning, at noon and before evening it should stand just vertically. Such tilting should be quite sufficient. But the question is the overall daily surplus yield of energy, I would bet about 15% ?
I live close to the 67 parallel. I have quite some education in photovoltaic and renewable energy(but 10 years old and not maintained).
I have been thinking about VPV-panels for my home for several reasons(mounted on the south wall of my house).
1. Less time covered by snow.
2. I dont need the most energy peak summer, I need it in february when the sun is low on the sky.
3. More protected from the elements.
You just gave me more to think about and when I have the money I will invest in VPV-panels.
i wonder how much more of a benefit it would be to run Vertical Bi-Facial panels with water cooling to pull more heat away from the panels into a water source for a building/home to use as a hot water source, then loop the cooled water from the building back into the solar panels. The building/home would act as basically a large heat exchange. I know Linus from LTT used the hot water from his panels to warm his pool, and the pool acts as the heat exchanger, would be interesting to see if, on a larger scale, this would be beneficial.
Granted it would end up costing more due to plumbing requirements, but not having your hot water heater running constantly would likely reduce overall building electricity usage so might be a net positive.
Fyi I skip the beginning every time to avoid the music. Thank you for the excellent videos and knowledge
Definitely, the music is just wrong.
Hear hear !
Pun not intended. Stop irritating 'music' on the 'background' !
Very interesting...
1. If the direction the panels are placed runs east-west, the extra power received from the "back" side isn't as important. Further, I've noticed most standard solar panels have white backs. If they had black backs instead, would vertical single-sided panels also benefit from improved heat dissipation?
2. One of the biggest enemies of solar farms is hailstorms, and one of the reasons I haven't gone ahead with a planned solar system was fear of a hailstorm taking it out. Mounting panels vertically would mitigate nearly all of the issue.
i really like the idea of using these vertical solar panels as sound-barriers along highways!
and the way they seem to line up with our usage-charts! (would not apply to roads, i know)
almost too good to be true.
Far too easy to vandalize. Think of how many metal signs already have “holes” put in them. Imagine letting someone know they now have all this glass around them too.
@@aussie2uGA and various pebbles would annihilate them
@@aussie2uGA True but pretty sure that's only a problem in 'Murica and maybe your Aussie outback, plenty of other places in the world where people are grown ups
@@ottodidakt3069 that’s another good reason to fight to keep borders closed ;)
Yay, I guessed heat! Interesting to come across this today. I’m just starting to think about how to implement solar on a tiny budget. I want to do some travel when I retire, so being mobile interests me. Then my power went out and came on, then went off again, three times in a row the other day. So I started thinking about a couple of panels and storage batteries to cover some basic energy needs with the more frequent power outages I fear are coming in the future. But I don’t want to put panels on my roof, and I can’t afford a whole system. So I was thinking of putting two or three panels in a more vertical orientation where I have space next to the house along my driveway. After seeing this video, that isn’t sounding so nuts! That said, it’s a south facing location. Thanks for giving me more to ponder!
My only guess is that the light entering the panels at a steep angle actually causes the light energy to diffuse in the panel cells better than when it strikes at a perpendicular angle and mostly reflects out.
Didn't think I got it, but the temperature explanation makes sense. Seems to me not only will these solar panels have an efficiency bump, but you can actually fit more in the same space. As long as you aren't shading neighboring panels except very late and early in the day, you can still smush them closer together than angled panels. Like you also said though, much more convenient for using the space in between them.
One of the big advantages too is that snow is less likely to stay on them so that means less maintenance and output immediately once it's daylight. When I setup my off grid solar system I plan to go vertical for that reason alone.
Sometimes advancement isn't some big technical breakthrough. More often it is some other application or combination of use that makes something more economical. In this case the vertical orientation helps the thermal performance since backside heat isn't trapped and it can convect that heat up and away.
1) In the plains states they install snow fence to prevent drifting over highways. Why not vertical solar.
2) In urban area they erect sound attenuating walls along highways that bisect residential areas. Why not face them on the south sides with panels?
3) Backsides of billboards?
4) Privacy fencing
I'm surprised the following hasn't been brought up:
1. Solar panels are quite reflective, as you can see in a lot of shots in this video. I wouldn't be surprised if vertically-aligned panels can absorb some of that reflected light more easily. Depending on the time of day, I could see that contributing more to energy collection than the panels being cooler. Let's face it - the Netherlands isn't exactly a hot country, so it seems a little odd to me their solar panels are suffering _that_ much from heat.
2. If the panels are mounted vertically, surely, it would take little to no effort to just use the same rack to mount a pair of monofacial panels opposing each other. This of course is assuming it's cheaper per KWH to do that rather than use bifacial panels.
3. If your land is long but narrow, you could always just do a tower of vertical panels. Might be difficult to handle strong winds, though.
4. I'm sure you could dramatically improve the light collection by using a white/reflective surface on the ground. A thin layer of small white gravel could be an incredibly cheap way to make a significant performance improvement.
I thought about the reflectiveness of the panels when I saw the thumbnail ;) Would be interesting to see if you can adjust them so the light can better bounce between them. Maybe some kind of slight curve in the panels itself? And the monocrystalline cells for the main side and polycrystalline for the back side to get more energy from the diffuse light. Just some thoughts :)
The other bonus of BVPV in agriculture: you don't really need to restrict to short crops. You can just stilt the panels to be a few feet higher to get over taller crops like corn and sunflower.
nah, too much underground infrastructure to work well with traditional farm equipment.
The only problem with taller crops will be the over all cost of installing it would out pace the return by a long shot. You are not just talking about getting over the crops, but also having room for everything else as well. Taller the infrastructure the harder it also has to work with weather such as wind, rain, and snow hitting them.
Two additional benefits may be privacy and noise protection. In our village, many house owners want to install something anyway.
Another bonus for these panels would be in areas that have common large hail storms.
this would greatly decrease the impact angle.
Downsides, not feasible for a typical residential home
I reckon that miniature vertical setup could work in a residential setting though maybe?
Really like the use of them as fences and in fields. Cool use on a farm.
Just got our vertical bifacial panel array installed and commissioned to help power our house. Currently just an 8kW set of paneled. Not even a week of profile and our sky is pretty cloudy. Can't wait to get some time to get some information.
I think if it could be made durable enough, it would make an interesting alternative to a traditional fence. Heck, make them a part of the fence.
It really does make sense that heat would be the big variable. People have been water cooling their panels in recent years, so I would think they'd provide some correlation to to idea. Let's see what happens.
Later in the video there is literally some footage of farms that have used vertical solar panels AS the fence itself, even dividing up a small pasture with the panels
@@GodofGHz To be clear, that was what made me think it. But I was thinking more about inside towns and the like and not so... bare. Panels should be able to be integrated stylistically. I just didn't go that far into it because I just woke up and was prepping for work.
There might be a few more advantages:
Less dust/snow collection on the vertical surfaces therefore less cleaning/water consumption. Also easier inspection /repair. Easier installation since only one line of support poles are needed
Easy to install on flat roofs. For that matter, also on sloping roofs. ((They might look odd, though.))
Vertical in situations there is a lot of snow makes sense to keep off the snow, Or northern latitudes were the sun is lower. Or if you need the land for something else since it's a better utilization of space. On the other hand if you have slanted roof slanted panels make sense. And horizonal panels would make sense if you want to shade what underneath from water evaporation. And fixed obstructions (trees, buildings, etc) that block sun from a particular direction can be a factor in orientation of panels too. And so on.
So the right answer to what way to orient panels.. it depends on the specific situation.
Vertical panels may work on the side of buildings, but they won't work as fencing due to grass shading the panels, and the risk of damage from animals or mowing the grass.
The other flaw in their study is that they are comparing against other fixed panels.
Most commercial level installs are using available roof space and vertical will have less panels or wattage per square metre.
Generation scale PV Power Plants already use Trackers so are taking advantage of the early morning and late evening sun rays.
Grass doesn't normally grow tall enough to block a significant portion of a fence unless you are growing wild grass and not ever mowing it.
Damage due to mowing should also be negligible unless you are using an open wire trimmer.
@@mbartelsm The grass only needs to block the equivalent of one square cell out of the whole panel to reduce the output to 1/3rd or less. And yes that can still be significant for the whole string. On a 1500v 8A string, just blocking 5 cells was enough to reduce the string by 30%.
Rocks flying out from under the mower will cause plenty of damage, unless you plan to remove every pebble over 5mm big from a 30 metre border along every string.
Are you planning on setting them 6" or less from the ground? If so, why? Because horizontal or vertical, I'm planning on setting them about 7 feet from the ground. That way they provide shade, and we can move around under them. Could fill most of our back and front yards with them. Only thing stopping me at this point is that we're on the edge of tornado alley. I need a way to bring them down and lay them flat on the ground or preferably wait until I can get flexible ones and wrap them around the mounting posts. Then unwrap them and get them back up after the storm has passed.
Don't really want to invest 20-30k to have them rip free and smash into my or my neighbor's house, or end up in the next county, during the next storm.
Watch the video to the end, it shows vertical solar modules suitable for rooftops.
@@ThisIsATireFire Depends on your location for which sun angle you set them on.
And yes wind loading is a massive part of the design process.
For some rough numbers, a 1sqm panel sitting between 0-10 deg to a 100kmh wind blowing over the top exerts a 1/2 tonne load on the panel, with similar negative lift as well.
If it is completely flat it gets a vibration like a sail fluttering that will destroy the panel, and about 30 deg it starts acting like a wing and tries to lift, obviously a panel that is 90 deg to the wind is going to have a large loading . We didn't work out those loading because it is a silly way to mount panels.
If I remember correctly, 15-20 deg was the ideal storage position during a high wind event, but that also depends on the terrain, and surrounding structures and fauna that can make the airflow more turbulent.
Convection cooling is also more effective on vertical surfaces.
This
Alternatively, you can use panels from French company DualSun, and you get to both harvest thermal energy and improve photovoltaic efficiency by cooling the panels with the liquid that harvest the thermal energy to heat water. DualSun claims that they have the best overall efficiency as they harvest both thermal + photovoltaic energy.
Positive: fewer issues with snow and dust accumulation, and reduced vulnerability to hail damage.
Negative: greater vulnerability to wind damage. Also, of course, just as with all other solar power, relying on it means freezing in the dark on cold winter nights, and it will never be as reliable or cost competitive with fossil fuels and nuclear.
I want to install some of these at my home. I'm curious on the outcome as I 've not seen a single video with actual comparison between vertical and "regular" solar panel orientation.
Standard orientation is still going to give you more overall juice. The advantage for these is that they can be placed where standard panel arrays can't. It's not a replacement for standard arrays, but rather an additional way to collect solar. The study that showed the 2.5% improvement was over EXPECTATIONS for the east-west layout, not over standard horizontal panels. Think about a divided highway in the US. The median often isn't wide enough to deploy standard solar. It would be too chunked up. But you could run a line or two of these down the median. Generate a bit of power, add some shade, provide some noise reduction... and all in a space not suited for standard solar. And we've got one helluva lot of highways here.
@@sinocte I already have east/west facing panels. That's the nature of my roof. Make them point south would be far costlier due to have to buy the metallic structure.
However, having two peaks out of midday would be really interesting. Also, cloudy/misty days in winter make the production drop.
So, at some point I want to make install a couple of vertical bifacials, Then after a year I will be able to make an idea on how good or bad they are compared to just install more in the roof (that would mean change the 4kw agreement to export to the grid, something I'm not keen on doing).
Sweet Solar Energy (S.S.E.) Good morning from Calgary, Alberta. Thank you for your videos!
This is fascinating - I'm gonna fill a field in the UK with panels like this and see what happens...
Celsius, Matt, not Centigrade.
Otherwise, another fabulous video! ❤🎉😊
Being identical in their characteristics and scale, either is acceptable, especially in countries which have not adopted SI units in full.
As it turns out Centigrade is not acceptable to the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, the keeper of the flame for the Systeme International or SI, the modern metric system.
Maybe putting a reflector in the ground could help with this setup. Reflective mylar is real cheap and in some sense it should provide some of the benefits of sun tracking without the motors or reap the advantages of two layouts while having only one. However I imagine that the reflector may increase the heat so it might negate that benefit, maybe a dichroic reflector would be ideal.
Shame I live in an apartment so I can't test any of that.
Have a balcony? Google balcony solar panels.
@@zanwoi8075 I live in a 3rd floor in a narrow street in a place where it rains from 1/3 to 1/2 of the days of the year, don't have a balcony and not that much window area.
Even my chili plants struggle a bit, solar panels would do terrible.
I hope to move some time, hopefully to a house with a small terrain for solar panels and other stuff but at best it will take a year or two more.
Vertical seems a lot more convenient for many applications. However, as always, the best solution is multiple solutions. It's nice to have more viable options!
Well one thing is mounting these in a working agricultural field is not going to be popular with farmers. What you don't see is the foundation work and wiring for an install like this. That "B" roll of a tractor mowing between the panels is pure folly. Field equipment does not always go where you expect it to. Matt I would like to see a few "vertical" PVs in your yard.
It will be popular with farmers when you can lease the land and still farm it. Agrivoltaics is a thing
As Matt said, much higher yield crops than grass would be best between the solar panel rows. Such crops require much smaller and nimble equipment than the tractor pulling that mower...
I guess that all foundation and wiring work would not extend more than a foot on each side of the panel... much less even if foundation piles are sufficient... which is probably the case.
I doubt these need much of a foundation, they could probably be driven into the ground with a screw-shaped piling, down three or four feet or so. Having worked on small vegetable and strawberry operations, I think these vertical panels would be great. Wind protection for little transplants would be amazing. I could see the ideal spacing being ~3x 80" beds between vertical arrays. You've got 20' wide alleys and you could do strawberries or divide those beds down to 6 40" beds to do cabbage, cilantro or other vegetables
I see mowers on that tractor that are attached to the front and back. I think you are referring to the American trailer implements that will often track one way or another. Many European model implements are fixed to the power unit.
thermal is better becouse the pannels wil be much cooler
My guess was ambient light from the surrounding that would not hit a panel that is directly facing the sun. Like from snow or water masses around the vertical panels would get a lot of indirect light.
Like vertical panels on a slope facing a lake would be optimal and free from snow during winters.
This feels illegal being this early to a video 😳
Uh.. you get it alerted to your phone...
I was feeling the same way!😂
TL;DR: There’s solar panels on both sides 🤯
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I have an idea that might even increase that benefit in removing some of the Heat by simply doing panels that have like tube holes going down through between the panels I do two panels together with square tubes to allow air to be drawn up through acting as an air cooler due to convection!
Something I thought about a while ago when my parents got solar fitted was what about a water feed to wash the dust of the panels and cool them down on hot days. But then why not have the solar panels have a jacket built in with a solenoid on the bottom for drainage and one on the top for air bleed, a contact at the top to detect it is full and a water feed line. Then this could be run back to a cooling system that when it detects panel temperatures over 30C shuts the drain valves and opening the bleed valves as the panels fill with water. Once they are full the drain opens and water is pumped around the loop to a radiator. When it gets cold over night they can drain down to a storage tank so they can’t freeze. Or run a antifreeze coolant
My house has a flat roof, and I do need to go up on that roof on a regular basis. I'm also in northern NY state where we at least used to get a lot of snow in the winter. And once there is snow on the roof I'm not going to go up there. All of this means that I'm very reluctant to put horizontal panels up there. If they get covered with snow, there's no way I can go up there and clear off the snow.
I knew very little about vertical panels. I knew they existed in some places, but never would have considered them for my house. But I could put a few vertical panels up on my flat roof and I think that'd work quite well. My biggest concern would be with how much wind they might be hit with. Very interesting.
In ARIZONA the relective glass will eat your leaves. Maybe they can be stood even closer together.
Staring out my window at last night's snowfall, blanketing my horizontal patio but leaving my vertical fence clear ... I can see (as shown in the video) that vertical panels will be intrinsically snow-free.
But even with vertical panels, solar is still intermittent, non-dispatchable, and ultimately unreliable. In fact, the political mandates that require our electric grid to give precedence, and pay premium prices, for that intermittent solar and wind power, prove that "intermittent" solar and wind power are disastrous to our energy-based economy.
The fact that vertically mounted panels gets better convection cooling isn't exactly a mystery. Also, if there's plants between the rows of panels, you get evaporative cooling. Desert sand typically has reasonably high albedo, which makes it heat up less from direct sunlight, but the heat that is caught isn't dissipated very well.
Salt production in evaporation ponds could be the "ideal" process to combine with solar PV, in some situations, if, the solar systems can be made to handle the salt dust/brine droplets well without becoming too expensive. Solar panels would reduce wind exposure, which evaporation ponds typically rely heavily on, but solar panels could cause a great increase in convection. In short, for solar PV you want the visible light, for evaporation you want the heat. So, while it probably would require some careful considerations/development, there should be potential for net benefit for both processes, besides dual use of land. If nothing else, angled solar panels could be fitted with rain gutters and reduce the amount of rain the reach the ground, making evaporation ponds viable in more areas, and at the same time collect potentially useful rainwater.
When solar cells were expensive, making bifacial panels to increase net output just a little bit wasn't such a great idea in most cases. Now, the cells themselves almost an insignificant part of the total system cost, adding solar cells to the back side can very well be worth it, when the panels are to be mounted in a way that the "backside" receives more than insignificant light. And in places where the panels fills some other function where both sides happens to receive meaningful amount of light, why not.
I'm at 8:17 so I don't know if it's addressed, but: another benefit to this orientation is the land around the PV panels is MUCH more usable, for grazing or whatever.