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ENPhotovoltaic carports combine energy generation with functional and architectural constraints that differ significantly from standard ground-mounted or rooftop PV systems. Their performance is strongly influenced by complex geometry, dense structural elements, proximity to users and vehicles, and interaction with the surrounding built environment. As a result, simplified assumptions on shading, bifacial gains, or uniform irradiance distribution often lead to large uncertainties and poorly informed design choices.
LuciSun provides technical advisory and advanced modelling services for PV carport projects, supporting feasibility studies, comparative design assessments, and risk-aware energy yield evaluations. These studies are carried out by LuciSun experts using LuSim as a core simulation tool, allowing carport configurations to be analysed explicitly in 3D when conventional PV modelling approaches are no longer sufficient.
Unlike linear ground-mounted PV plants, carports are composed of repetitive but dense structures, including beams, columns, roofing elements, and often multiple orientation changes. Shading is dominated by near-field objects rather than distant horizons, and edge effects play a central role. These characteristics make carports highly sensitive to geometric details that are difficult to capture using simplified two-dimensional representations.
LuSim represents carport structures explicitly in 3D, preserving the full geometry of supporting elements and their spatial relationship with the PV modules.
This allows shading interactions between structural components and modules to be evaluated consistently across the full system, including border and corner effects that often dominate carport performance.
PV carports are frequently equipped with bifacial modules, as their elevated structure and open underside create opportunities for rear-side irradiance collection. However, bifacial gains in carports are highly dependent on local conditions. Ground materials, parked vehicles, structural elements, and nearby objects create strong spatial variability in albedo and reflected irradiance, which cannot be represented by uniform bifacial gain factors.
In practice, the effective albedo beneath carports depends not only on ground materials but also on parking usage. The proportion of occupied parking spaces, vehicle colour, and vehicle height can significantly alter the reflected irradiance reaching the rear side of bifacial modules. LuSim allows such effects to be explored through scenario-based simulations, rather than assuming a fixed or uniform albedo beneath the structure.
Due to dense structural shading and heterogeneous irradiance, PV carports often exhibit strong spatial variability at module and sub-module level. Localised shading can activate bypass diodes, introduce electrical mismatch, and generate losses that are not proportional to the shaded area.
Dense carport structures can also cast significant shading on the rear side of PV modules, particularly near beams and support elements. These effects can strongly reduce bifacial gains locally and introduce spatially heterogeneous electrical behaviour, which must be assessed explicitly to avoid overestimating performance.
PV carport projects typically involve trade-offs between energy performance, structural constraints, aesthetics, user comfort, and site-specific limitations. Questions related to module orientation, spacing, height, structural layout, parking density, and bifacial relevance must be assessed jointly rather than in isolation.
LuciSun’s advisory studies may involve multiparameter simulations to compare alternative layouts, module heights, orientations, or parking configurations. Such analyses help quantify trade-offs between energy yield, parking functionality, structural constraints, and uncertainty, rather than optimising a single parameter in isolation.
Shading and bifacial effects computed by LuSim are integrated coherently into the PV energy yield modelling chain. Direct, diffuse, and reflected irradiance components are evaluated consistently in the presence of complex geometry, and their impact on electrical performance is propagated into annual energy yield estimates.
This approach supports uncertainty-aware assessments, avoiding both optimistic simplifications and overly conservative assumptions that can distort the perceived viability of PV carport projects.
The PV carport modelling approaches implemented in LuSim are routinely applied in LuciSun’s technical advisory studies for real carport projects, including commercial-scale installations in dense environments. These methods have been exercised over several years in both industrial contexts and research activities, including peer-reviewed studies addressing bifacial PV performance in carport and canopy configurations.
Accurate modelling of PV carports is essential to support sound technical and financial decisions. By explicitly representing geometry, shading, reflectance, vehicle occupancy scenarios, and electrical effects in 3D, LuSim enables LuciSun’s advisory services to assess feasibility, compare design options, and identify key sources of uncertainty in complex carport projects, where simplified approaches are no longer adequate.
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