Solar fences are starting to gain traction in European and North American markets, with figures from energy software specialist Gridcog suggesting that vertical bifacial solar could also be technically and economically viable in Australia.
Australia's Gridcog has revealed that solar fences – effectively, bifacial panels oriented east and west at 90-degree tilt angles – demonstrate promising yield and revenue potential, based on simulations comparing a vertical install to a typical ground-mount solar system.
Gridcog, which provides software to plan, track and optimize distributed energy projects, created two scenarios in the simulation: one using conventional solar and one using a solar fence configuration. It then modeled sites in London and Sydney against both scenarios and ran a one-year model against typical irradiance data for each location.
The conventional solar utilised 100 kW (DC)/100 kW (AC) systems for both sites using monofacial panels. London was oriented 180 degrees south and Sydney at 0 degrees north, both with a tilt of 40 degrees.
