Vertical Free-Swinging Photovoltaic Racking Energy Modelling: A Novel Approach to Agrivoltaics

To enable lower-cost building materials, a free-swinging bifacial vertical solar photovoltaic (PV) rack has been proposed, which complies with Canadian building codes and is the lowest-capital-cost agrivoltaics rack. The wind force applied to the free-swinging PV, however, causes it to have a non-90° tilt angle and no energy performance model accurately describes such a system. To provide a simulation model for the free-swinging PV, where wind speed and direction govern the array tilt angle, this study builds upon the open-source System Advisor Model (SAM) using Python. After the SAM python model is validated, a view factor model is used to calculate front and back irradiations. The findings reveal that free-swinging PV generates 12% more energy than vertical fixed-tilt PV. Free-swinging PV offers a levelized racking cost, which is 30% lower than that of other agrivoltaics racks including commercial fixed-tilt metal, optimized fixed-tilt wood, and seasonally-adjusted wood PV racking.