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IEEE JOURNAL OF PHOTOVOLTAICS
On the PV Tracker Performance: Tracking the Sun
Versus Tracking the Best Orientation
Carlos D. Rodríguez-Gallegos , Oktoviano Gandhi , S. K. Panda , and Thomas Reindl
Abstract—This article models the performance of photovoltaic
tracking algorithms worldwide, based on the overall insolation
collection, by comparing two tracking algorithms, namely tracking
the sun (TS) and tracking the best orientation (TBO). In general, the
latter is expected to receive higher irradiance with the drawback
of requiring a higher installation and maintenance cost (due to
the extra sensors). The aim of this research is then to quantify
how big the difference is on irradiance collection from these two
trackers worldwide by analyzing the data from 61 ground weather
stations. In addition, three different tracking mounting structures
are considered in this work: first, horizontal single axis tracker
(HSAT); second, tilted single axis tracker (TSAT); and third, dual
axis tracker (2T). Furthermore, the irradiance collection from front
and rear sides are estimated for installations of monofacial and
bifacial modules. The simulations reveal that, although the TBO
results are higher than the TS ones, there is not a big difference on
their insolation collection for latitude locations below 60° (<1.8%).
Nevertheless, for higher latitude locations, TBO tracking systems
can achieve a considerably higher performance reaching values of
up to 3.3%, 7.1%, and 2.9% for HSAT, TSAT, and 2T systems,
respectively. It was also observed that for bifacial and 2T systems
in particular, high albedo values would produce a considerable
enhancement on the TBO performance with respect to TS.
Index Terms—Bifacial modules, dual axis tracker (2T),
horizontal single axis tracker (HSAT), monofacial modules, tilted
single axis tracker (TSAT).
I. INTRODUCTION
HE accumulated global photovoltaic (PV) installation ca-
T pacity keeps on increasing, reaching an overall value be-
yond 600 GWp as of 2019 [1]. Although this number comes
mostly from installations with fixed module orientation, PV
installations with trackers (which allow for automated adjust-
ment of module orientation) are becoming more popular due to
Manuscript received April 16, 2020; revised June 3, 2020; accepted June
27, 2020. This research was supported by the National Research Foundation,
Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore under the Energy Innovation Research
Programme (EIRP award No. NRF2012EWT-EIRP001-021) and the Energy
Programme and administrated by the Energy Market Authority, Singapore
(EP award No. NRF2017EWT-EP002-004). (Corresponding author: Carlos D.
Rodríguez–Gallegos.)
Carlos D. Rodríguez-Gallegos, Oktoviano Gandhi, and Thomas Reindl are
with the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore, National Univer-
sity of Singapore, 117574, Singapore (e-mail: carlos.rodriguez@nus.edu.sg;
oktoviano.gandhi@u.nus.edu; thomas.reindl@nus.edu.sg).
S. K. Panda is with the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore, National
University of Singapore, 117574, Singapore, and also with the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore,
117583, Singapore (e-mail: sanjib.kumar.panda@nus.edu.sg).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JPHOTOV.2020.3006994
2156-3381 © 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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1
their cost reduction in time [2]–[4] and extra energy generation,
i.e., single and dual axis (2T) tracker systems produce a global
average extra energy of 26% and 31%, respectively [5]. As a
result, tracker installations have begun to gain a considerable
market share [2]–[4], [6], which is expected to increase in the
near future [6].
In general, we can distinguish two control algorithms that can
be implemented in PV trackers.
1) Tracking the sun (TS), also known as true tracking: The
PV system tracks the sun as closely as possible to enhance
the irradiance collection from the direct normal irradiance
(DNI) component. These systems only require informa-
tion on the location and time in order to estimate the sun
position and to calculate the desired module orientation.
2) Tracking the best orientation (TBO): while TS aims to
enhance the DNI collection, TBO tries to set the module
orientation, to the one which is able to collect the highest
overall irradiance at any point in time. Consequently, TBO
does not only consider the direct, but also the diffuse and
ground irradiance components. Because of that, irradiance
sensors are required to predict or track the optimal orien-
tations.
It can then be expected that TBO systems collect more
irradiance than their TS counterparts. Nonetheless, the latter
are cheaper and simpler as no additional sensors are required.
The aim of this article is then to estimate the extra insolation
collection from TBO systems with respect to the TS ones for PV
installations composed of monofacial modules and of bifacial
modules, as they have also been in the spotlight due to their
cost reduction [7], [8]. In this work, we have employed the data
from 61 ground weather stations worldwide to generate accurate
simulations for single and dual axis trackers.
Works have been done to enhance the tracking performance
under particular scenarios, such as cloudy weather [9], [10] and
high latitude locations [11]. On the contrary, this work aims
to analyze the different conditions worldwide. As such, the
results and discussions in this work are not only valuable to the
scientific community but also for developers and engineering,
procurement and construction (EPC) companies to take better
decisions on which kind of tracking device to employ based on
their project details.
The rest of this article is organized as follows: Section II
provides the mathematical formulation to estimate the irradi-
ance reaching the front and rear side of PV modules. Then, in
Section III, the analyzed tracker systems are described together
with the approach on how to estimate their module orientation
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2 IEEE JOURNAL OF PHOTOVOLTAICS
in time. Section IV describes the case study, indicating the
ground weather stations to be analyzed and the approach to esti-
mate the typical meteorological year (TMY) data. Subsequently,
Section V shows and discusses the results. Finally, the overall
conclusion of this work is provided in Section VI.
II. IRRADIANCE MODELLING
The overall irradiance falling on a module surface, It [W/m2 ],
can be defined as
It = If + Ir
where If [W/m ] and Ir [W/m ] correspond to the irradiance
2 2
reaching the front and rear sides of the module, respectively. Ir
is only considered when analyzing bifacial modules. If can be
expressed as
If = Idir,f + Idif,f + Ignd,f
where Idir,f [W/m ], Idif,f [W/m ], and Ignd,f [W/m ] corre-
2 2
spond to the direct, diffuse, and ground irradiance components
reaching the front side of the module. These can be defined as
Idir,f = DNI · cos (AOIf )
where DNI [W/m ] is the direct normal irradiance and AOIf [◦ ]
2 rotate to almost all required orientations, i.e., tilt angle
is the angle of incidence between DNI and the normal of the
module front surface.
Idif,f =
 
1 + cos (θm ) a
DHI · (1 − F1 ) · + F1 ·  + |F2 · sin (θm )|
2 c
(4)
where DHI [W/m2 ] is the diffuse horizontal irradiance, θm [◦]
is the module tilt angle and F1 , F2 , a , and c are coefficients
defined in [12] following the Perez model [13]. This model
divides the sky hemisphere in three regions, namely, sky [Isky,f ,
first term from (4)], circumsolar [Icir,f , second term from (4)],
and horizon [Ihor,f , third term from (4)].
1 − cos (θm )
Ignd,f = GHI · ρ · (5)
2
Equation (5) represents the irradiance contribution reflected
from the ground following the isotropic model [14]. This
value will increase with a higher global horizontal irradiance,
GHI [W/m2 ], and ground albedo, ρ, as these will further en-
hance the overall irradiance reflected from the ground. As shown
by this equation, the module tilt angle will also have an influence
on the estimation of Ignd,f .
The rear irradiance Ir can also be divided into its direct (Idir,r ),
diffuse (Idif,r ), and ground (Ignd,r ) components. Where Idir,r
and Idif,r can be estimated applying (3) and (4) by modifying
the relative tilt angle, i.e., replacing θm with θm +180. With
respect to Ignd,r , the ground shading caused by the module itself
needs to be considered. Therefore, an anisotropic model should
be utilized. Here, we employ the approach from [7] with the
considerations presented in [15].
Once the total irradiance is estimated, the overall insolation
can then be directly calculated. The approaches presented here to
estimate the front and rear irradiance have been validated in [5]
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considering real PV systems composed of monofacial/bifacial
modules and fixed-tilt/tracking systems.
III. ANALYZED PV SYSTEMS
Three different type of trackers, each with monofacial and
bifacial modules installed, are studied in this work. They are as
follows.
1) Horizontal single axis tracker (HSAT): These mounting
structures have one axis of rotation aligned in the North–
South line so that they can rotate from East to West with a
(1)
maximum rotation angle of ±60° as indicated by multiple
manufacturers [16]–[22]. In addition, the torque tube is
horizontal with respect to the ground.
2) Tilted single axis tracker (TSAT): These mounting struc-
tures also have one axis of rotation aligned in the North–
South line so that they can rotate from East to West
(2)
considering a maximum rotation angle of ±60° as well.
2 In addition, the torque tube is 30° tilted with respect to
the ground as typically indicated by manufacturers, (see
e.g., [23]).
3) Dual axis tracker (2T): These systems have two axes of
(3)
rotation and therefore it is assumed that their modules can
between 0° and 90° and azimuth angle between 0° and
360°. By allowing full rotation, we are considering the
best case scenario for 2T energy generation. Although,
there are some brands which allow for a maximum tilt
angle of 90° [24] and maximum azimuth of 360° [25], this
range might change based on the selected manufacturer for
particular projects.
Furthermore, portrait module installations are assumed with
module length of 2 m and its middle point at 2 m from the ground.
The module orientation in time for the tracker systems is then
defined based on the following criteria.
1) TS: The module orientation for the single axis tracker is
calculated following the approach presented in [26]. With
respect to the 2T, it has enough freedom of rotation so that
the front side of the module is always perpendicular to the
sun during daytime.
2) TBO: For each time step, the total irradiance It is cal-
culated for all possible module orientations (with a one
degree resolution) for these trackers, and the orientation
with the highest value is selected.
In addition, with respect to the single axis trackers, a back-
tracking algorithm is also implemented to avoid row-to-row
shading considering a ground coverage ratio (GCR) of 0.3.1
This value is within the allowed range from multiple tracker
manufacturers and similar to the one from real PV systems,
e.g., [5], [10], [27].2 For 2T, it is assumed that the rows are
properly spaced (or that there is only one tracker structure) and
therefore no backtracking algorithm is considered.
1 The percentage of difference in the yearly insolation for all single axis
tracker systems when backtracking algorithm is implemented with respect to
the outcome when it is not is below 2.7% and 5.4% for locations with latitudes
below and above 60°, respectively.
2 The ideal value of GCR would depend on the particular weather conditions as
well as the cost related to the PV system such as the land cost. This optimization
analysis will be left for a future study.
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RODRÍGUEZ-GALLEGOS et al.: ON THE PV TRACKER PERFORMANCE: TRACKING THE SUN VS TRACKING THE BEST ORIENTATION
Fig. 1. Percentage of improvement on the insolation collection of TBO systems with respect to their TS counterparts. (a) HSAT. (b) TSAT. (c) 2T with monofacial
and bifacial PV modules.
While in this work we focus on the overall insolation collec-
tion to estimate the performance from the different PV systems,
bifacial modules actually have a lower efficiency at their rear
side. This is represented by the bifaciality factor (b), which has
a value range between zero to one, i.e., b = 1 denotes that the
efficiency of the rear and front sides is the same. Therefore,
because the final aim should be to enhance the PV yield, this
parameter should ideally be considered in our calculations as a
weighted factor for the insolation collection at the rear side.
Nevertheless, high-quality bifacial technologies have already
reached bifaciality factors around 0.9 [28] or even higher [29]
and we expect this value to keep on increasing in time. Thus, for
simplicity, we have assumed the insolation reaching the front
and rear sides to have the same influence.
IV. CASE STUDY
To generate accurate results, historical 1-min irradiance data
(GHI, DNI, and DHI) from ground weather stations are consid-
ered (see Table I in the Appendix). These are composed of a
total of 58 stations worldwide provided by the World Radiation
Monitoring Center—Baseline Solar Radiation Network [30],
as well as three stations located in Singapore (SIN), Germany
(TDE), and Australia (TAU), provided by the Solar Energy
Research Institute of Singapore. The data are first processed by
applying the filtering and filling approaches presented in [15] to
later estimate the TMY data [31]. The TMY is subsequently used
to calculate the yearly insolation for each system. In addition, the
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3
monthly albedo data are obtained from NASA [32]. The details
of the ground weather stations are provided in the Appendix
section. Furthermore, to estimate the sun position in time, a solar
position algorithm is applied [33]. The time step to calculate It
is set to 1 h.3
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Fig. 1 presents the percentage of improvement on the overall
insolation collection for the TMY (I [%]) for TBO installa-
tions (ITBO [Wh/m2 ]) with respect to their TS counterparts
(ITS [Wh/m2 ]) when monofacial and bifacial PV modules are
considered for HSAT Fig. 1(a), TSAT Fig. 1(b), and 2T Fig. 1(c).
The percentage of improvement calculation is defined as fol-
lows:
 
ITBO
I = − 1 · 100% (6)
ITS
Fig. 1 shows that the potential of TBO algorithm tends to be
higher for bifacial and monofacial installations when dealing
with single and dual axis tracker systems, respectively. A gen-
eral trend can be appreciated where TBO shows a significant
improvement for locations with latitudes above 60°, reaching
values up to 3.3%, 7.1%, and 2.9% for HSAT, TSAT, and 2T
systems, respectively. For locations with latitudes below 60°, the
improvement is less marked, i.e., below 1.8% for all systems.
3 The percentage of difference in the yearly insolation for all the analyzed
systems and locations when the time steps set to 1 min and 1 h are below 1%.
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4 IEEE JOURNAL OF PHOTOVOLTAICS

Fig. 2. Yearly insolation from stations located. (a) USA (BOS station). (b) China (XIA station). (c) Singapore (SIN station). (d) Antarctica (SPO station). These
bar plots are divided into the contribution from their irradiance components. The x labels have the following nomenclature (besides for “Fixed-tilt” which refers
to modules with a constant orientation): “X–YZ,” where “X” corresponds to the tracker system (HSAT, TSAT, or 2T), “Y” refers to the employed tracking control
(S when TS and B when TBO) and “Z” indicates whether monofacial or bifacial modules are considered (M and B, respectively).

To have a better understanding on the contribution of the
different irradiance components, Fig. 2 shows the yearly inso-
lation for all the analyzed systems for four selected stations,
namely, USA (BOS station), China (XIA station), Singapore
(SIN station), and Antarctica (SPO station). The insolation
for traditional PV systems with a fixed orientation (facing the
equator with tilt angle equal to latitude) is also presented in
this figure as a reference. Each of the irradiation component’s
contribution is represented in these bar plots. The figure shows
a strong contribution from the Idir,f component for all the
analyzed systems, in particular for USA where Idir,f has a share
between 59% and 71%. The second-biggest contribution is for
Idif,f , specially for locations with a high diffuse fraction such
as Singapore where Idirf,f has a share between 39% and 50%.
Meanwhile, for Ir , the diffuse and ground components are larger
than the direct one. Especially for bifacial modules, these plots
reveal that, while the TBO results tend to have a lower Idir,f
contribution than the one from TS, they still achieve a higher
overall insolation, as instead of selecting the module orientation
most perpendicular to the sun (which enhances Idir,f ), it selects
the orientation at which It is the highest (as TBO also takes into
account the contribution from the other irradiation components).
The results presented so far were obtained considering sur-
face albedo values provided by NASA. Nevertheless, because
surface albedo can play a critical role on the energy generation
of PV systems (in particular when dealing with bifacial mod-
ules [15], [34], [35]) and its value can be controlled by mod-
ifying the ground conditions, the effect of albedo on the TBO
and TS algorithms is analyzed by estimating the percentage of
improvement for the different systems when a fixed albedo
value is considered for the whole year. The albedo range of
values goes from zero (no ground reflection) to one (full ground
reflection) with a step increase of 0.2. These results are pre-
sented in Fig. 3 where it can be appreciated how the albedo
would change the percentage of improvement on the insolation
collection [from TBO with respect to TS, as shown in (6)].
An interesting behavior can be appreciated for the monofacial
systems where, starting from an albedo of zero, the percentage of
improvement actually decreases with the increase in albedo until
it reaches a certain value at which the percentage of improvement
starts to increase with the albedo value. This can be explained
based on the following: as discussed in Section II, the overall
irradiance is composed of the direct, diffuse (which contains
the sky component, Isky,f ), and ground (Ignd,f ) contributions.
While Isky,f reaches its highest or lowest value when the module
is horizontal facing the sky or the ground, respectively, [see
first term from (4)], Ignd,f reaches its highest or lowest value
when the module is horizontal facing the ground or the sky,
respectively, [see Eq. (5)]. Therefore, it can be understood that
these two contributions are opposite to each other. As a result,
this behavior can be divided in two stages.
1) When the albedo is zero (or quite low), the potential for
Isky,f is higher than the one from Ignd,f even when the
albedo value starts to slowly increase. Consequently, the
TBO algorithm will give higher preference to an orien-
tation favorable to Isky,f . Yet, it will sacrifice part of the
ground irradiance potential (which is increasing with the
albedo value). Therefore, although the overall insolation

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RODRÍGUEZ-GALLEGOS et al.: ON THE PV TRACKER PERFORMANCE: TRACKING THE SUN VS TRACKING THE BEST ORIENTATION 5

Fig. 3. Percentage of improvement on the insolation collection (TBO control with respect to its TS counterpart) versus surface albedo. (a) USA (BOS station).
(b) China (XIA station). (c) Singapore (SIN station). (d) Antarctica (SPO station).

collection is increasing as the albedo value raises, the
percentage of improvement by the TBO algorithm with
respect to the TS algorithm is decreasing.
2) As the albedo value keeps on increasing, a point is reached
where the potential contribution from Ignd,f is higher than
the one from Isky,f and therefore the TBO algorithm will
give higher preference to a module orientation favorable
to Ignd,f . Thus, the percentage of improvement will start
to increase as the albedo raises.
The reason why the previous behavior was not really appreci-
ated for the bifacial modules is because they have the capability
to absorb irradiance at both sides. As a result, the overall sky
diffuse component and ground irradiance contribution (consid-
ering front and rear sides) will not be in such a direct opposition
as with the monofacial modules.
These results also reveal that, in general, bifacial and 2T
installations tend to get the largest advantage of an increase
in the albedo value when applying the TBO algorithm, with a
performance increase of up to 3.9%, 7.5%, 3.7%, and 2.4% for
HSAT-Bifacial, TSAT-Bifacial, 2T-Bifacial, and 2T-Monofacial,
respectively. With respect to the TSAT systems composed of
bifacial modules, it can be appreciated that they do not reach
as high percentage of improvement values as their HSAT and
2T counterparts for the BOS, XIA, and SIN stations shown in
Fig. 3. However, it actually achieves considerable values for
high latitude locations as can be seen for the SPO station from
Antarctica [see Fig. 3(d)]. This outcome was also confirmed
after analyzing other high latitude locations, e.g., Spitsbergen
(NYA station) and Siberia (TIK station).
It is also interesting to notice that for 2T systems, the percent-
age of improvement is higher for monofacial modules than for
the bifacial modules under low albedo conditions. However, this
trend changes with high enough albedo values. This is why for
Fig. 1 (c) the 2T monofacial modules, in general, yield a higher
percentage of improvement.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this work, we modeled the performance of PV tracking
algorithms worldwide, considering the overall insolation col-
lection, based on their selected control, namely, to track the
sun position (TS) and to track the best module orientation
(TBO). Three tracking systems were analyzed when considering
monofacial and bifacial modules: horizontal single axis tracker
(HSAT), tilted single axis tracker (TSAT) and dual axis tracker
(2T). The 1-min resolution weather data from 61 ground weather
stations were taken into account together with monthly albedo
values provided by NASA to estimate the yearly isolation from
all these systems.
The results revealed that there is no big difference in the
insolation collection from these two controls as the percent-
age of improvement on the yearly insolation from TBO with
respect to TS was below 1.8% for locations with latitude below
60°. However, for higher latitude locations, the percentage of
improvement reached values up to 3.3%, 7.1%, and 2.9% for
HSAT, TSAT, and 2T systems, respectively. A study on the
influence on the surface albedo was also conducted; this showed

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6 IEEE JOURNAL OF PHOTOVOLTAICS

that applying TBO control on the bifacial and 2T systems can
reach a considerable improvement in their performance with
high surface albedo values (up to 3.9%, 7.5%, 3.7%, and 2.4% for
HSAT-Bifacial, TSAT-Bifacial, 2T-Bifacial, and 2T-Monofacial,
respectively). Readers should keep in mind that the obtained
results from this study can vary, in particular for bifacial systems,
based on the selected module dimension (2 m length in this
work), height of the installation (module middle point at 2 m
height for trackers) and albedo (obtained from NASA) values
as these three parameters have a considerable influence on the
ground reflected irradiance contribution at the rear side of the
module.
In this study, we assumed a fixed GCR of 0.3 when dealing
with single axis trackers as this was within the range from
multiple manufacturers and is similar to the one applied in real
PV installations. Nevertheless, its ideal value should depend on
the project specifics. Therefore, in future work, we will aim to
optimize this parameter based on a techno-economic analysis
considering local weather and economic conditions of the site
of interest to minimize the levelized cost of electricity.
This work is then of interest to the scientific community, as
well as to the PV developers and EPC companies to help them
decide which tracking system would be more beneficial for their
particular projects.

APPENDIX
TABLE I
PROPERTIES OF THE GROUND WEATHER STATIONS INCLUDING THEIR CLIMATE CONDITION, I.E., AR: ARID, TR: TROPICAL, TM: TEMPERATE, HA: HIGH ALBEDO

The “Time period” column indicates the years from which weather data were obtained to estimate the TMY.

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RODRÍGUEZ-GALLEGOS et al.: ON THE PV TRACKER PERFORMANCE: TRACKING THE SUN VS TRACKING THE BEST ORIENTATION
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