Abstract

In Middle-Europe a significant increase in solar energy production can be achieved by applying solar tracking in photovoltaic (PV) farms. If the basis for the comparison is the total surface occupied by a solar field made up of PV modules placed densely near to each-other, then the plus energy can be less than the expected maximum, since the modules begin to shadow their neighbouring panels when being rotated. This shadowing can be reduced by applying gaps between the rotated units, however than a part of the total surface is inactive for energy production thus lowering the resulted energy yield. This paper proposes a mathematical method to determine the optimum gap dimensions between the rotated modules both in East-West and North-South direction which arrangement assures maximum solar energy produced by two-axis tracking on a certain area. Results of the calculation verify the expectation that there is an optimum gap size between PV panels even in case of taking into account only two panels.