  Bifacial solar panels are perceived to be the technology of choice for next
generation solar farms for their increased energy yield at marginally increased
cost. As the bifacial farms proliferate around the world, it is important to
investigate the role of temperature-dependent energy-yield and levelized cost
of energy (LCOE) of bifacial solar farms relative to monofacial farms,
stand-alone bifacial modules, and various competing bifacial technologies. In
this work, we integrate irradiance and light collection models with
experimentally validated, physics-based temperature-dependent efficiency models
to compare the energy yield and LCOE reduction of various bifacial technologies
across the world. We find that temperature-dependent efficiency changes the
energy yield and LCOE by approximately -10 to 15%. Indeed, the results differ
significantly depending on the location of the farm (which defines the
illumination and ambient temperature), elevation of the module (increases
incident energy), as well as the temperature-coefficients of various bifacial
technologies. The analysis presented in this paper will allow us to
realistically assess location-specific relative advantage and economic
viability of the next generation bifacial solar farms.
