Optimal Tilt Angle of Photovoltaic Panels with Consideration of Mutual Shading Loss

The tilt angle and orientation play an important role in maximizing the solar radiation collected by a PhotoVoltaic (PV) panel. At any given location represented by its latitude and longitude, the solar output is affected by tilt angle. Other issue in designing the PV plants is mutual shading of the PV modules on the others. In this paper, different tilt angles of sheds in the PV plants with mutual shading effects will be considered. Results of this paper are shown that with increasing the tilt angle, the annual irradiance will increase but the mutual shading loss also increase. Therefore, tradeoff between annual irradiance and mutual shading loss is necessary. Results proved that with consideration of mutual shading loss of sheds, in Tehran NE location, optimal tilt angle should be tuned to 30o with fixed pitch and ground coverage ratio of 0.5.