The interest in floating photovoltaic (FPV) power plants has grown rapidly in recent years. In many established and emerging markets, such as Japan, South Korea, UK, China, and India, FPV is already considered as an attractive and viable option for PV deployment. In 2016, Singapore launched the world's largest FPV testbed, with a total installed capacity close to 1 MWp. This testbed aims to study the economic and technical feasibility, as well as the environmental impacts of deploying large‐scale FPV systems on inland fresh water reservoirs. The testbed currently consists of 8 systems, with different configurations in terms of PV modules, inverters, and floating structures. The field experience of deploying, operating, and maintaining these systems, together with a comparison of their performance and reliability offers highly valuable learning points for the FPV community. In this work, we present extensive, high‐quality field measurement data; compare operating environments on water and on a rooftop; analyze system performance of different FPV systems; and share some issues encountered. We found that FPV does confer some performance benefits, but best practices should also be established to avoid new issues and pitfalls associated with deploying PV on water.

This work performs a comprehensive techno-economic analysis worldwide for photovoltaic systems using a combination of bifacial modules and single-and dual-axis trackers. We find that single-axis trackers with bifacial modules achieve the lowest LCOE in the majority of locations (16% reduction on average). Yield is boosted by 35% by using bifacial modules with single-axis trackers and by 40% in combination with dual-axis trackers.

Si based tandem solar cells represent an alternative to traditional compound III-V multijunction cells as a promising way to achieve high efficiencies. A theoretical study on the energy yield of GaAs on Si (GaAs/Si) tandem solar cells is performed to assess their energy yield potential under realistic illumination conditions with varying spectrum. We find that the yield of a 4-terminal contact scheme with thick top cell is more than 15% higher than for a 2-terminal scheme. Furthermore, we quantify the main losses that occur for this type of solar cell under varying spectra. Apart from current mismatch, we find that a significant power loss can be attributed to low irradiance seen by the sub-cells. The study shows that despite non-optimal bandgap combination, GaAs/Si tandem solar cells have the potential to surpass 30% energy conversion efficiency.

No abstract