7 ms·

Vertical Solar Panels Are Out Standing

200 points by lxm 1y ago

dylan604 1y ago
Am I reading this correctly? Vertically they produce 77% compared to 90% of the tilted panels? In what graph is the lower number better? Also: "Specifically, [Dave] is using bifacial solar panels– panels that have cells on both sides. In his preferred orientation, one side faces South, while the other faces North. [Dave] is in the Northern Hemisphere, so those of you Down Under would have to do the opposite, pointing one face North and the other South." Isn't that the same thing? Is one of the sides specifically meant to face the sun? Maybe I'm just not as knowledgeable about solar panels, but what sunlight is being harnessed by the backside of the sun facing panel? Are they catching reflected light, otherwise, they are directly in shadow.
- jszymborski 1y ago
  > Isn't that the same thing? I had the same reaction. I noticed the top comment reading "some of us live in the southern hemisphere" so maybe this was a quick edit and not thought through? Unless one of the sides of the panel is meant to face north, but that doesn't sound likely
- detaro 1y ago
  Bifacial panels usually have one side that's a bit more more efficient than the other. The backside can catch reflections, sky light on overcast days, ... But it's usually more common to orient them east-west, so they have peaks in the mornings and in the afternoon/evening, which combines well with other solar panels that are mounted south-facing, or might even just match your electricity consumption pattern better.
- msandford 1y ago
  If you look at the far right hand bar the B-N/S says 131% which is the highest bar on the chart. So it's producing more than the standard tilted slightly south orientation from what I gather. The legend is a bit hard to read for sure.
- petters 1y ago
  > Isn't that the same thing? Yes, it’s a joke.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    If bifacial panels are made so each side is the same making orientation not an issue, then sure, hahahaha (not really. it's a lame joke). If there is a back side, then you absolutely need to reverse the orientation depending on hemisphere. It would be better stated that they need to be pointed towards the equator. If these are literally reversible, it seems like wasted money to me as one side will never produce as much as the reverse does.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - duskwuff 1y ago
      You're assuming that the bifacial panels have their faces pointing north/south; they can also be highly effective oriented east/west, so that they maximize power production in the morning and evening. (Also: if the panels do have a "preferred" orientation, you can offset that by installing them in an alternating pattern, or at random.)
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  The hemisphere talk is a joke, the situation being shown off here is one where there is snow in the ground, which greatly increases the amount of sunlight hitting the backside panel. This is also in January, when the sun in Ohio is very low in the southern sky. So north/south oriented panels are much more ideal.
- Linosaurus 1y ago
  > Vertically they produce 77% compared to 90% of the tilted panels? In what graph is the lower number better? 77% of the ’normal orientation’ per year, but the graph and 131% value is for a day in winter (January 15 this year). At least that’s my read.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    I also believe vertical panels produce more than flat panels in the mornings and evenings, thereby giving them anti-duck curve properties.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    So one day of the year is producing 131% yet still only averages 77% for the year? Yeah, that sounds like a good trade off. /s I'm still trying to decide if the entire post is trolling or not. Nothing about it sounds sane to me.
    - Xylakant 1y ago
      So your problem is that during summer, average solar production is much higher than in winter in the first place. So to ensure that you have sufficient energy in winter, you can either overprovision heavily for summer use (lots of flat panels facing south) or you can sacrifice summer efficiency to gain winter efficiency - vertical panels do that.
    - fckgw 1y ago
      It's not just about production, it's also about reducing maintenance costs (don't collect snow, less dust build up on panels) and land usage. If you can take that 77% average, but maybe stick a couple more panels on land to reach your energy goals in an overall smaller footprint with less maintenance work, then maybe it's a good solution to specific problems.
    - adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
      If you had a solar panel that produced half as much power as regular, but produced power at night that would be a massive win. This is a less extreme equivalent. It produces less power than a normal solar pannel, but it produces power at an important time (when regular solar panels don't produce much power).
- ThrownOffGame 1y ago
  [flagged]
- dessimus 1y ago
  The graph confused me for a moment, but then realized the graph is showing the winter with SNOW on the ground, not the general case. So in the winter the vertical panels produce more power than tilted panels in very specific conditions and depending on how often that occurs, it may make up for the loss in efficiency during other times of the year. I'm guessing the vertical panels gain some advantage of the sun reflecting off the snow and into the vertical panel that the tilted panels do not, especially when the sun is at low angles to the horizon.
xnx 1y ago
It's such an interesting optimization problem. Maximizing annual production isn't the only goal. It's also about: never running out of power, having surplus power when useful, minimizing installation cost, minimizing maintenance cost, guarding against dust and hail, minimizing use of land, etc. Approaches range from straight vertical to flat on the ground: https://erthos.com/earth-mount-solar/ https://erthos.com/earth-mount-solar/
- goda90 1y ago
  Earth mounting reminds me of when I used to daydream about autonomous, mobile, solar panel factories to cover huge swathes of sandy desert with solar panels. I doubt the mobile factory thing would ever make sense, but autonomous installation would be really cool.
  - toss1 1y ago
    Combine it with the desert reclamation efforts finding success pushing back the Sahel, and it could be amazing
- colechristensen 1y ago
  The cost is now at the point where we don't care so much about actually using every watt and when we do need more watts at a particular time we add more in "inefficient" configurations to supply it. Whole industries are going to pop up to take advantage of the intermittent very cheap electricity. Also there will be a competitive balance between the cost of storage and the "cost" of non-optimally aligned solar panels.
  - justincormack 1y ago
    So far we dont have any industries popping up, other than battery storage. Intermittent power means unused capex some of the time which means the thing needs to be cheap. Is there a category that fits?
    - ZeroGravitas 1y ago
simpsond 1y ago
Utility scale fields tend to have single axis trackers which can optimize output. They are expensive though. I wonder if a manual rack that could lock at 30 or 90 could work and be cost effective.
- fanf2 1y ago
  A newish solar farm near here has fixed panels https://maps.app.goo.gl/DCw7DfNb5bDTRu1E9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/DCw7DfNb5bDTRu1E9
marcodiego 1y ago
Come on: "Specifically, [Dave] is using bifacial solar panels– panels that have cells on both sides. In his preferred orientation, one side faces South, while the other faces North. [Dave] is in the Northern Hemisphere, so those of you Down Under would have to do the opposite, pointing one face North and the other South." That is not the kind of thing I come here for.
- YcYc10 1y ago
  I'm assuming that's a joke, but who knows.
  - magicalhippo 1y ago
    As Dave has shown in previous videos, bifacials are not symmetrical, and the backside produces less power under same conditions. So N-S would be different from S-N orientation.
wzdd 1y ago
In their field?
gorfian_robot 1y ago
I read somewhere (maybe in Dave's youtube comments) that the price of fencing is high enough that some folks have used bifacial vertical solar panels as a fence.
floatrock 1y ago
Article doesn't give a whole lot of context, but there's two key innovations here: 1. Bi-facial solar panels: can take in sunlight from either end 2. Mounting bi-facials vertically so they can take in sunlight from both directions. I've been hearing experiments about these for a few years now. There's three main benefits to the vertical arrangement that could, given certain situations, make it more economically valuable: 1. In places with high-albedo snowy winters, this arrangement can boost winter production, which if you have snow, tends to be the energy-heavy time of year. 2. Keeps panels cooler. Panels lose efficiency when they get hot, and by having them vertical, they can run cooler. Losses in less direct sunlight are somewhat offset by efficiency gains from cooler operations. 3. More power during shoulder periods (anti-duck-curve). Especially in places like California that have high solar penetration, prices for excess energy are minimal during peak solar activity. Vertical arrangements give more power in the morning and evening, which is when traditional fields are just ramping up or ramping down. Thus, even if you're making less power overall, you can be making more valuable power by having more production during these ramp-up/ramp-down periods. Unclear how much of an effect these counter-acting forces actually add, but I understand solar developers are looking into these arrangements.
- Havoc 1y ago
  The one gotcha is that roof mounting for vertical is a bit of a headache & the structural support is often precisely the wrong way round.
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    This is an interesting application; it sounds like they've worked through a bunch of those issues: https://cleantechnica.com/2025/09/27/bifacial-rooftop-vertical-solar-panels-shine-in-norway/ https://cleantechnica.com/2025/09/27/bifacial-rooftop-vertic...
    - water-data-dude 1y ago
      Interesting that they list wind as one of the places where vertical panels have the advantage - my intuition would have been the other way around, with angled panels doing better in windy conditions. Wind uplift isn't something I'd have even thought about.
jws 1y ago
At 45°N latitude, I keep mine nearly vertical year round. I used to adjust them 4 times a year for more optimal production. There are issues beyond angle of incidence. Being nearly vertical keeps the snow off in the winter. In the summer it reduces the cleaning required (it's a sea bird rookery, so that's kind of a lot). Beyond that, the telemetry needs are constant year round so if the panels can cover the needs in the winter, then summer is no problem. My current strategy for small installations when you have an equator facing wall or fence is slap the panels on it and be done with it.
hunterpayne 1y ago
This setup almost certainly took more carbon to make than it will ever replace. This is usually true anywhere it snows regularly. There are a couple of exceptions, but unless you are above 7000ft of elevation you are just making the problem worse. This guy should donate this setup to someone in Mexico where it would make sense.
- AnotherGoodName 1y ago
  You need to back that up with genuine analysis and proven studies. The reason i say this is that in some parts of the world capitalist things like building renewables to make or save money is politicised as a left or right wing issue with people arbitrarily for or against purely on that bucketing. The politicisation is stupid and doesn’t even align well to any traditional left/right political divide other than ‘at one point in history they fell on one side or the other of the issue’ so now they are stuck there. It’s interesting with the perspective of someone who’s experienced a different countries right/left wing politics which have completely different views on various issues. As in there’s often no reason for such things to be in either side honestly. In fact for certain things that never got politicised in the USA such as battery storage the red states are leading the world in grid connected battery installation rates since it’s so profitable and the topic has avoided being bucketed into a left/right category all the while blocking offshore wind farm installation which has been bucketed as such. Anyway due to this politicisation you cannot just post ‘this renewable initiative doesn’t work’ without honest analysis to back it up. This would need to include the massive drop in solar power and battery prices that have occurred recently.
- wolfram74 1y ago
  I'm juggling a baby approaching lunch time at the moment, so I can't go into too much depth on this paper[0] I found 40 seconds ago, but the conclusion seems to think that solar panel EROIE in siwtzerland is somewhere between 7 and 10, which as a proxy for carbon intensity, /probably/ means it will actually result in net carbon reduction. [0]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516307066#s0050 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...
  - 1y ago
malchow 1y ago
In addition to bi-facials starting to work quite well, HNers may be interested in a rising class of ultra-low-mass material that has come out of work at Stanford and Intel in transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) (e.g. for MoS₂, WS₂, WSe₂, etc.). It turns out these enable a very high specific-power PV cell that adds another even more attractive production curve behind what is happening in vertical bi-facials. See e.g.: https://ee.stanford.edu/frederick-nitta-koosha-nassiri-nazif-and-eric-pop-show-tmd-solar-cells-have-high-potential-indoor https://ee.stanford.edu/frederick-nitta-koosha-nassiri-nazif... https://www.arinna.xyz/ https://www.arinna.xyz/
jillesvangurp 1y ago
A comment that I heard recently is that in some places using solar panels is literally cheaper than using wood panels for fences. I'm not sure how true that is of course but it does make you think a bit. The optimal place where to put solar panels increasingly is becoming "wherever you can afford to". If vertical space is what you have, why not use it? People in apartments don't have access to roofs. But they might have balconies. Balcony railings can fit a few solar panels usually. You can buy solar panels for use on balconies in the supermarket in Germany. They only generate a few hundred watt. But that can add up to close to something like a kwh per day if you get a lot of sun on your balcony. At 40 cents per kwh. That's 12 or so euros per month. I pay about 70 per month currently. And I can get a couple of balcony panels for something like 200-300 euros. And I might get some money back on those even. The idea with balcony solar is that it might offset part of what your fridge uses. You simply plug it into a wall socket and your fridge takes that power instead of from the grid. All safe and approved equipment, the inverter cuts the power if there is no grid power. I haven't done this (my balcony faces east and only gets a few hours of sun in the early morning). But it's easy to see how this could work.
- wiredfool 1y ago
  Quick look near here -- wood panels are ~50-99eur for .9->1.8m x 1.8m fence panels. I've priced out 550W solar panels (which should be about 1x2M) for about 100£. (Both retail, but different countries (ire/uk)) So, not price parity but also only about a factor of 2 or so. On the other hand, Ali Express panels are about half that UK price at a 10 panel quantity, with unknown shipping. I'm kind of eyeing the concrete block wall in the back garden currently covered by a hedge.
- childintime 1y ago
  Sadly in Germany you mostly miss out on one big advantage one often gets in sunny countries: power during outages. That said, WW3 terrorism acts may change that. It could be wise to have at least some backup.
  - somat 1y ago
    Almost no private solar installations give power during outage, for the most part they use something called a grid tied inverter. This uses the power grid to shape the waveform and costs about a tenth of what a self shaping inverter costs. the unexpected downside, no grid, no power. I have yet to find conclusive evidence if it is possible to use a small full inverter to drive grid tied inverters, that is, have the grid off capability of a full inverter with the cheap cost of a grid tied inverter. It sounds reasonable, but I don't see anyone doing it.
balderdash 1y ago
How do vertical panels handle wind loads?
- otherme123 1y ago
  Two axis panels put themselves vertical on high winds, but facing perpendicular to the wind direction. So it depends on the wind direction.
scotty79 1y ago
I wonder why 30 deg was chosen. If you want to maximize energy production in the winter they should be installed more vertically so that for most of the winter the angle between the sun rays and the panel is around 90 deg.
lacoolj 1y ago
Is the title (here and on the article) supposed to say "outstanding" as in "amazing! wonderful!" or is it deliberately "out standing" as in ... standing...out...actually, I don't even know if this is a valid phrase.
- k2enemy 1y ago
  I am excited to be here while you experience your first pun!
  - lacoolj 1y ago
    Still need the explanation of what pun I'm missing, but looking forward to seeing what you come up with :)
    - nkurz 1y ago
      There's a standard joke about a farmer who wins an award because he is "outstanding in his field". This is a variation on that: https://explainthejoke.com/2022/08/28/above-and-beyond/ https://explainthejoke.com/2022/08/28/above-and-beyond/
- NortySpock 1y ago
  That's the joke, both are valid uses of the phrase and sound alike. "My scarecrow is the best in the business! He's out standing (outstanding) in his field!" (i.e. a field in a farm, or in his area of expertise)
vzaliva 1y ago
bifacial panels indeed produce more electricity. but does it justify the cost increase? simply speaking if bifacial panels cost 2x, do they produce anything close to 2x electricity?
- mixmastamyk 1y ago
  Looked like a lowest 6% boost in the winter, but more in the summer. Likely makes sense as panel prices decrease.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  The rule of thumb is that bifacial increases production by 35% for a 10% cost increase. YMMV.
fortranfiend 1y ago
They're out standing in the field. ...I'll let myself out.
PicassoCTs 1y ago
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giantg2 1y ago
Why not mount the double sided vertical panels edge towards the sun with a mirror panel on each side? Add some passive cooling channels between the panels, or even boost it with a small fan. I would think that might result in even better gains instead of having one side wirh full sun and the other eith indirect sun.
- corysama 1y ago
  The same source (Dave) has a video from a year ago on vertical panels with horizontal panels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD1MT-ek05w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD1MT-ek05w
- turtlebits 1y ago
  Solar panels are cheap. A single mirror that size likely will cost more than the panel itself.
  - giantg2 1y ago
    Why would it be? All you need is an aluminum PVD or plated piece of plastic with a protective coating. Should be pretty cheap.
  - kragen 1y ago
    Coroplast and aluminized boPET should be a perfectly adequate mirror.
jiehong 1y ago
They also better resist bad weather, like hail
ggm 1y ago
How simple can steerable panels be made? Obviously mechanical steerage introduces weak points. Nothing is without cost.
- myself248 1y ago
  Pivot mounts stopped making sense when panels were around $10/watt. They're around $1/watt now. Don't bother.
  - ggm 1y ago
    so if you want to capture both early morning and late afternoon sun, and maximise return during the peak of the day, simply install more panels, some upright, and some at the right slant to achieve your goals?
throwaway984393 1y ago
[dead]
nerdralph 1y ago
We need more data on bifacial performance in order to simulate the performance. I've done some experiments with vertical bifacial TOPCon panels, and the lower production vs 45-degree tilt seems to be offset by the lower mounting costs. I run a solar company, and for ground mount systems the cost of the frames and foundations is more than the panels. With vertical PV it doesn't matter if power production is maximized, what matters is return on investment.
hopelite 1y ago
I’m not sure I am understanding how 77% is totally awesome if tilted panels produce 90%, but could the vertical panel efficiency not be improved by putting some reflective material at a tilt towards the vertical panels? Also, couldn’t the tilted bi-sided panels also have some reflector send light to the rear side?
jeffrallen 1y ago
> In his preferred orientation, one side faces South, while the other faces North. [Dave] is in the Northern Hemisphere, so those of you Down Under would have to do the opposite, pointing one face North and the other South. Nice example of hacker humor.
askvictor 1y ago
How well do they handle wind loading?
- jack_riminton 1y ago
  This is my main concern too. The next question is what is the cost and difficulty of creating the foundations necessary to handle the worst wind you can expect?
Perenti 1y ago
I wonder how much extra work is required to make a vertical panel stay up in a 200kmh cyclone (hurricane for the Americans, typhoon for the Asians)? I saw a flying cow once during Cyclone David, and that wasn't a particularly strong storm. I guess they could be attached at the sides to some other strong structure, but doing that without getting shade on the panel could be tricky.
- baq 1y ago
  need a slab of concrete and some steel to attach the panels to that. probably a lot in dollar terms.
jhoechtl 1y ago
snow is acting as a mirror. Won't have the effect on green gras.
mnw21cam 1y ago
I did some analysis on this recently with a load of simulations. If you ignore the sunlight bouncing back from the surface (and I suspect this might still be the case if you don't ignore it), then the best orientation that maximises winter generation is to have the panels pointing towards the equator and tilted to directly face the Sun at its lowest point at noon in winter. Pointing them lower down (like vertically) reduces the generation. If you're reasonably far from the equator then this is still fairly close to vertical, probably good enough for snow to slide off them. If you're close to the equator, then vertical North-South panels will generate very little indeed.
weinzierl 1y ago
We've researched sun tracking vs fixed angle installations deeply in the early 2000s. Our conclusion back then was that sun tracking was not worth it for us mainly because we could not produce it both cheaply enough and make it reliable over the projected lifetime enough to not eat the additional profits from the better yield of tracking. The bi-facial vertical solution seems to be similar in spirit. Forgo the theoretical additional advantage of better angles for higher reliability (no sweeping required).
ZeroGravitas 1y ago
One overlooked factor is that as well as getting cheaper, panels are getting more efficient. Commonly installed modules are about 50% more efficient than a decade ago. Just lots of little tweaks continue to add efficiency, even as they are getting cheaper via lots of other little tweaks. If you installed a panel today, and assumed a bad case panel degredation over time, then the new panel would be as efficient as the decade old panel was on install even after 40 years of use. If you assume the new panel has good degredation performance it'll outperform the 2015 panel at install time until roughly 2135! Or to tie it to the current article, vertical panels installed today outperform perfectly pitched panels from 2015. There are physics-based limits to how high the efficiency can get with one material, but people are already selling modules with extra layers that work around that limit.
deadbabe 1y ago
Could it be feasible to have a program where you purchase solar panels on some farm somewhere and then whatever their power output is you get discounted on your electric bill? Residential solar power is never going to take off. Everything I’ve seen about it is a scam: you finance a massive purchase and then you pretty much spend the next 30 years paying for panels that you can’t take with you when you move and you can’t even sell the home while it has a lien from the solar company. And on top of that you spend so much money it takes forever to break even anyway. Pointless. And the panels ruin the aesthetics of your house! Fuck this. If you could have your panels mounted remotely far away then you don’t care what they look like and you can even move to a new house and still reap their benefits. You could even buy more panels than what your house or apartment could fit.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
- cman1444 1y ago
  What's the advantage of the end user financing this? If it would be a good investment for an individual, surely it would be an even better investment for institutional money.
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    The funding of the solar panels would be distributed across lots of smaller players instead of requiring heroic amounts of capital from a few organizations. Why would an institution invest in panels if the return is purely in watts? But who knows, I’m not a financial engineer so not sure if this works well.
ratelimitsteve 1y ago
>In his preferred orientation, one side faces South, while the other faces North. [Dave] is in the Northern Hemisphere, so those of you Down Under would have to do the opposite, pointing one face North and the other South. I'm sure that they mean there's a side A and a side B in some way that I don't quite understand but boy howdy does this sentence seem meaningless absent its context.

200 points by lxm 1y ago

Am I reading this correctly? Vertically they produce 77% compared to 90% of the tilted panels? In what graph is the lower number better? Also: "Specifically, [Dave] is using bifacial solar panels– panels that have cells on both sides. In his preferred orientation, one side faces South, while the other faces North. [Dave] is in the Northern Hemisphere, so those of you Down Under would have to do the opposite, pointing one face North and the other South." Isn't that the same thing? Is one of the sides specifically meant to face the sun? Maybe I'm just not as knowledgeable about solar panels, but what sunlight is being harnessed by the backside of the sun facing panel? Are they catching reflected light, otherwise, they are directly in shadow.

jszymborski 1y ago
> Isn't that the same thing? I had the same reaction. I noticed the top comment reading "some of us live in the southern hemisphere" so maybe this was a quick edit and not thought through? Unless one of the sides of the panel is meant to face north, but that doesn't sound likely
detaro 1y ago
Bifacial panels usually have one side that's a bit more more efficient than the other. The backside can catch reflections, sky light on overcast days, ... But it's usually more common to orient them east-west, so they have peaks in the mornings and in the afternoon/evening, which combines well with other solar panels that are mounted south-facing, or might even just match your electricity consumption pattern better.
msandford 1y ago
If you look at the far right hand bar the B-N/S says 131% which is the highest bar on the chart. So it's producing more than the standard tilted slightly south orientation from what I gather. The legend is a bit hard to read for sure.
petters 1y ago
> Isn't that the same thing? Yes, it’s a joke.
- dylan604 1y ago
  If bifacial panels are made so each side is the same making orientation not an issue, then sure, hahahaha (not really. it's a lame joke). If there is a back side, then you absolutely need to reverse the orientation depending on hemisphere. It would be better stated that they need to be pointed towards the equator. If these are literally reversible, it seems like wasted money to me as one side will never produce as much as the reverse does.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - duskwuff 1y ago
    You're assuming that the bifacial panels have their faces pointing north/south; they can also be highly effective oriented east/west, so that they maximize power production in the morning and evening. (Also: if the panels do have a "preferred" orientation, you can offset that by installing them in an alternating pattern, or at random.)
Workaccount2 1y ago
The hemisphere talk is a joke, the situation being shown off here is one where there is snow in the ground, which greatly increases the amount of sunlight hitting the backside panel. This is also in January, when the sun in Ohio is very low in the southern sky. So north/south oriented panels are much more ideal.
Linosaurus 1y ago
> Vertically they produce 77% compared to 90% of the tilted panels? In what graph is the lower number better? 77% of the ’normal orientation’ per year, but the graph and 131% value is for a day in winter (January 15 this year). At least that’s my read.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  I also believe vertical panels produce more than flat panels in the mornings and evenings, thereby giving them anti-duck curve properties.
- dylan604 1y ago
  So one day of the year is producing 131% yet still only averages 77% for the year? Yeah, that sounds like a good trade off. /s I'm still trying to decide if the entire post is trolling or not. Nothing about it sounds sane to me.
  - Xylakant 1y ago
    So your problem is that during summer, average solar production is much higher than in winter in the first place. So to ensure that you have sufficient energy in winter, you can either overprovision heavily for summer use (lots of flat panels facing south) or you can sacrifice summer efficiency to gain winter efficiency - vertical panels do that.
  - fckgw 1y ago
    It's not just about production, it's also about reducing maintenance costs (don't collect snow, less dust build up on panels) and land usage. If you can take that 77% average, but maybe stick a couple more panels on land to reach your energy goals in an overall smaller footprint with less maintenance work, then maybe it's a good solution to specific problems.
  - adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
    If you had a solar panel that produced half as much power as regular, but produced power at night that would be a massive win. This is a less extreme equivalent. It produces less power than a normal solar pannel, but it produces power at an important time (when regular solar panels don't produce much power).
ThrownOffGame 1y ago
[flagged]
dessimus 1y ago
The graph confused me for a moment, but then realized the graph is showing the winter with SNOW on the ground, not the general case. So in the winter the vertical panels produce more power than tilted panels in very specific conditions and depending on how often that occurs, it may make up for the loss in efficiency during other times of the year. I'm guessing the vertical panels gain some advantage of the sun reflecting off the snow and into the vertical panel that the tilted panels do not, especially when the sun is at low angles to the horizon.

xnx 1y ago

It's such an interesting optimization problem. Maximizing annual production isn't the only goal. It's also about: never running out of power, having surplus power when useful, minimizing installation cost, minimizing maintenance cost, guarding against dust and hail, minimizing use of land, etc. Approaches range from straight vertical to flat on the ground: https://erthos.com/earth-mount-solar/ https://erthos.com/earth-mount-solar/

goda90 1y ago
Earth mounting reminds me of when I used to daydream about autonomous, mobile, solar panel factories to cover huge swathes of sandy desert with solar panels. I doubt the mobile factory thing would ever make sense, but autonomous installation would be really cool.
- toss1 1y ago
  Combine it with the desert reclamation efforts finding success pushing back the Sahel, and it could be amazing
colechristensen 1y ago
The cost is now at the point where we don't care so much about actually using every watt and when we do need more watts at a particular time we add more in "inefficient" configurations to supply it. Whole industries are going to pop up to take advantage of the intermittent very cheap electricity. Also there will be a competitive balance between the cost of storage and the "cost" of non-optimally aligned solar panels.
- justincormack 1y ago
  So far we dont have any industries popping up, other than battery storage. Intermittent power means unused capex some of the time which means the thing needs to be cheap. Is there a category that fits?
  - ZeroGravitas 1y ago

simpsond 1y ago

Utility scale fields tend to have single axis trackers which can optimize output. They are expensive though. I wonder if a manual rack that could lock at 30 or 90 could work and be cost effective.

fanf2 1y ago
A newish solar farm near here has fixed panels https://maps.app.goo.gl/DCw7DfNb5bDTRu1E9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/DCw7DfNb5bDTRu1E9

marcodiego 1y ago

Come on: "Specifically, [Dave] is using bifacial solar panels– panels that have cells on both sides. In his preferred orientation, one side faces South, while the other faces North. [Dave] is in the Northern Hemisphere, so those of you Down Under would have to do the opposite, pointing one face North and the other South." That is not the kind of thing I come here for.

YcYc10 1y ago
I'm assuming that's a joke, but who knows.
- magicalhippo 1y ago
  As Dave has shown in previous videos, bifacials are not symmetrical, and the backside produces less power under same conditions. So N-S would be different from S-N orientation.

wzdd 1y ago

In their field?

gorfian_robot 1y ago

I read somewhere (maybe in Dave's youtube comments) that the price of fencing is high enough that some folks have used bifacial vertical solar panels as a fence.

floatrock 1y ago

Article doesn't give a whole lot of context, but there's two key innovations here: 1. Bi-facial solar panels: can take in sunlight from either end 2. Mounting bi-facials vertically so they can take in sunlight from both directions. I've been hearing experiments about these for a few years now. There's three main benefits to the vertical arrangement that could, given certain situations, make it more economically valuable: 1. In places with high-albedo snowy winters, this arrangement can boost winter production, which if you have snow, tends to be the energy-heavy time of year. 2. Keeps panels cooler. Panels lose efficiency when they get hot, and by having them vertical, they can run cooler. Losses in less direct sunlight are somewhat offset by efficiency gains from cooler operations. 3. More power during shoulder periods (anti-duck-curve). Especially in places like California that have high solar penetration, prices for excess energy are minimal during peak solar activity. Vertical arrangements give more power in the morning and evening, which is when traditional fields are just ramping up or ramping down. Thus, even if you're making less power overall, you can be making more valuable power by having more production during these ramp-up/ramp-down periods. Unclear how much of an effect these counter-acting forces actually add, but I understand solar developers are looking into these arrangements.

Havoc 1y ago
The one gotcha is that roof mounting for vertical is a bit of a headache & the structural support is often precisely the wrong way round.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  This is an interesting application; it sounds like they've worked through a bunch of those issues: https://cleantechnica.com/2025/09/27/bifacial-rooftop-vertical-solar-panels-shine-in-norway/ https://cleantechnica.com/2025/09/27/bifacial-rooftop-vertic...
  - water-data-dude 1y ago
    Interesting that they list wind as one of the places where vertical panels have the advantage - my intuition would have been the other way around, with angled panels doing better in windy conditions. Wind uplift isn't something I'd have even thought about.

jws 1y ago

At 45°N latitude, I keep mine nearly vertical year round. I used to adjust them 4 times a year for more optimal production. There are issues beyond angle of incidence. Being nearly vertical keeps the snow off in the winter. In the summer it reduces the cleaning required (it's a sea bird rookery, so that's kind of a lot). Beyond that, the telemetry needs are constant year round so if the panels can cover the needs in the winter, then summer is no problem. My current strategy for small installations when you have an equator facing wall or fence is slap the panels on it and be done with it.

hunterpayne 1y ago

This setup almost certainly took more carbon to make than it will ever replace. This is usually true anywhere it snows regularly. There are a couple of exceptions, but unless you are above 7000ft of elevation you are just making the problem worse. This guy should donate this setup to someone in Mexico where it would make sense.

AnotherGoodName 1y ago
You need to back that up with genuine analysis and proven studies. The reason i say this is that in some parts of the world capitalist things like building renewables to make or save money is politicised as a left or right wing issue with people arbitrarily for or against purely on that bucketing. The politicisation is stupid and doesn’t even align well to any traditional left/right political divide other than ‘at one point in history they fell on one side or the other of the issue’ so now they are stuck there. It’s interesting with the perspective of someone who’s experienced a different countries right/left wing politics which have completely different views on various issues. As in there’s often no reason for such things to be in either side honestly. In fact for certain things that never got politicised in the USA such as battery storage the red states are leading the world in grid connected battery installation rates since it’s so profitable and the topic has avoided being bucketed into a left/right category all the while blocking offshore wind farm installation which has been bucketed as such. Anyway due to this politicisation you cannot just post ‘this renewable initiative doesn’t work’ without honest analysis to back it up. This would need to include the massive drop in solar power and battery prices that have occurred recently.
wolfram74 1y ago
I'm juggling a baby approaching lunch time at the moment, so I can't go into too much depth on this paper[0] I found 40 seconds ago, but the conclusion seems to think that solar panel EROIE in siwtzerland is somewhere between 7 and 10, which as a proxy for carbon intensity, /probably/ means it will actually result in net carbon reduction. [0]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516307066#s0050 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...
- 1y ago

malchow 1y ago

In addition to bi-facials starting to work quite well, HNers may be interested in a rising class of ultra-low-mass material that has come out of work at Stanford and Intel in transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) (e.g. for MoS₂, WS₂, WSe₂, etc.). It turns out these enable a very high specific-power PV cell that adds another even more attractive production curve behind what is happening in vertical bi-facials. See e.g.: https://ee.stanford.edu/frederick-nitta-koosha-nassiri-nazif-and-eric-pop-show-tmd-solar-cells-have-high-potential-indoor https://ee.stanford.edu/frederick-nitta-koosha-nassiri-nazif... https://www.arinna.xyz/ https://www.arinna.xyz/

jillesvangurp 1y ago

A comment that I heard recently is that in some places using solar panels is literally cheaper than using wood panels for fences. I'm not sure how true that is of course but it does make you think a bit. The optimal place where to put solar panels increasingly is becoming "wherever you can afford to". If vertical space is what you have, why not use it? People in apartments don't have access to roofs. But they might have balconies. Balcony railings can fit a few solar panels usually. You can buy solar panels for use on balconies in the supermarket in Germany. They only generate a few hundred watt. But that can add up to close to something like a kwh per day if you get a lot of sun on your balcony. At 40 cents per kwh. That's 12 or so euros per month. I pay about 70 per month currently. And I can get a couple of balcony panels for something like 200-300 euros. And I might get some money back on those even. The idea with balcony solar is that it might offset part of what your fridge uses. You simply plug it into a wall socket and your fridge takes that power instead of from the grid. All safe and approved equipment, the inverter cuts the power if there is no grid power. I haven't done this (my balcony faces east and only gets a few hours of sun in the early morning). But it's easy to see how this could work.

wiredfool 1y ago
Quick look near here -- wood panels are ~50-99eur for .9->1.8m x 1.8m fence panels. I've priced out 550W solar panels (which should be about 1x2M) for about 100£. (Both retail, but different countries (ire/uk)) So, not price parity but also only about a factor of 2 or so. On the other hand, Ali Express panels are about half that UK price at a 10 panel quantity, with unknown shipping. I'm kind of eyeing the concrete block wall in the back garden currently covered by a hedge.
childintime 1y ago
Sadly in Germany you mostly miss out on one big advantage one often gets in sunny countries: power during outages. That said, WW3 terrorism acts may change that. It could be wise to have at least some backup.
- somat 1y ago
  Almost no private solar installations give power during outage, for the most part they use something called a grid tied inverter. This uses the power grid to shape the waveform and costs about a tenth of what a self shaping inverter costs. the unexpected downside, no grid, no power. I have yet to find conclusive evidence if it is possible to use a small full inverter to drive grid tied inverters, that is, have the grid off capability of a full inverter with the cheap cost of a grid tied inverter. It sounds reasonable, but I don't see anyone doing it.

balderdash 1y ago

How do vertical panels handle wind loads?

otherme123 1y ago
Two axis panels put themselves vertical on high winds, but facing perpendicular to the wind direction. So it depends on the wind direction.

scotty79 1y ago

I wonder why 30 deg was chosen. If you want to maximize energy production in the winter they should be installed more vertically so that for most of the winter the angle between the sun rays and the panel is around 90 deg.

lacoolj 1y ago

Is the title (here and on the article) supposed to say "outstanding" as in "amazing! wonderful!" or is it deliberately "out standing" as in ... standing...out...actually, I don't even know if this is a valid phrase.

k2enemy 1y ago
I am excited to be here while you experience your first pun!
- lacoolj 1y ago
  Still need the explanation of what pun I'm missing, but looking forward to seeing what you come up with :)
  - nkurz 1y ago
    There's a standard joke about a farmer who wins an award because he is "outstanding in his field". This is a variation on that: https://explainthejoke.com/2022/08/28/above-and-beyond/ https://explainthejoke.com/2022/08/28/above-and-beyond/
NortySpock 1y ago
That's the joke, both are valid uses of the phrase and sound alike. "My scarecrow is the best in the business! He's out standing (outstanding) in his field!" (i.e. a field in a farm, or in his area of expertise)

vzaliva 1y ago

bifacial panels indeed produce more electricity. but does it justify the cost increase? simply speaking if bifacial panels cost 2x, do they produce anything close to 2x electricity?

mixmastamyk 1y ago
Looked like a lowest 6% boost in the winter, but more in the summer. Likely makes sense as panel prices decrease.
bryanlarsen 1y ago
The rule of thumb is that bifacial increases production by 35% for a 10% cost increase. YMMV.

fortranfiend 1y ago

They're out standing in the field. ...I'll let myself out.

PicassoCTs 1y ago

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giantg2 1y ago

Why not mount the double sided vertical panels edge towards the sun with a mirror panel on each side? Add some passive cooling channels between the panels, or even boost it with a small fan. I would think that might result in even better gains instead of having one side wirh full sun and the other eith indirect sun.

corysama 1y ago
The same source (Dave) has a video from a year ago on vertical panels with horizontal panels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD1MT-ek05w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD1MT-ek05w
turtlebits 1y ago
Solar panels are cheap. A single mirror that size likely will cost more than the panel itself.
- giantg2 1y ago
  Why would it be? All you need is an aluminum PVD or plated piece of plastic with a protective coating. Should be pretty cheap.
- kragen 1y ago
  Coroplast and aluminized boPET should be a perfectly adequate mirror.

jiehong 1y ago

They also better resist bad weather, like hail

ggm 1y ago

How simple can steerable panels be made? Obviously mechanical steerage introduces weak points. Nothing is without cost.

myself248 1y ago
Pivot mounts stopped making sense when panels were around $10/watt. They're around $1/watt now. Don't bother.
- ggm 1y ago
  so if you want to capture both early morning and late afternoon sun, and maximise return during the peak of the day, simply install more panels, some upright, and some at the right slant to achieve your goals?

throwaway984393 1y ago

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nerdralph 1y ago

We need more data on bifacial performance in order to simulate the performance. I've done some experiments with vertical bifacial TOPCon panels, and the lower production vs 45-degree tilt seems to be offset by the lower mounting costs. I run a solar company, and for ground mount systems the cost of the frames and foundations is more than the panels. With vertical PV it doesn't matter if power production is maximized, what matters is return on investment.

hopelite 1y ago

I’m not sure I am understanding how 77% is totally awesome if tilted panels produce 90%, but could the vertical panel efficiency not be improved by putting some reflective material at a tilt towards the vertical panels? Also, couldn’t the tilted bi-sided panels also have some reflector send light to the rear side?

jeffrallen 1y ago

askvictor 1y ago

How well do they handle wind loading?

jack_riminton 1y ago
This is my main concern too. The next question is what is the cost and difficulty of creating the foundations necessary to handle the worst wind you can expect?

Perenti 1y ago

I wonder how much extra work is required to make a vertical panel stay up in a 200kmh cyclone (hurricane for the Americans, typhoon for the Asians)? I saw a flying cow once during Cyclone David, and that wasn't a particularly strong storm. I guess they could be attached at the sides to some other strong structure, but doing that without getting shade on the panel could be tricky.

baq 1y ago
need a slab of concrete and some steel to attach the panels to that. probably a lot in dollar terms.

jhoechtl 1y ago

snow is acting as a mirror. Won't have the effect on green gras.

mnw21cam 1y ago

I did some analysis on this recently with a load of simulations. If you ignore the sunlight bouncing back from the surface (and I suspect this might still be the case if you don't ignore it), then the best orientation that maximises winter generation is to have the panels pointing towards the equator and tilted to directly face the Sun at its lowest point at noon in winter. Pointing them lower down (like vertically) reduces the generation. If you're reasonably far from the equator then this is still fairly close to vertical, probably good enough for snow to slide off them. If you're close to the equator, then vertical North-South panels will generate very little indeed.

weinzierl 1y ago

We've researched sun tracking vs fixed angle installations deeply in the early 2000s. Our conclusion back then was that sun tracking was not worth it for us mainly because we could not produce it both cheaply enough and make it reliable over the projected lifetime enough to not eat the additional profits from the better yield of tracking. The bi-facial vertical solution seems to be similar in spirit. Forgo the theoretical additional advantage of better angles for higher reliability (no sweeping required).

ZeroGravitas 1y ago

One overlooked factor is that as well as getting cheaper, panels are getting more efficient. Commonly installed modules are about 50% more efficient than a decade ago. Just lots of little tweaks continue to add efficiency, even as they are getting cheaper via lots of other little tweaks. If you installed a panel today, and assumed a bad case panel degredation over time, then the new panel would be as efficient as the decade old panel was on install even after 40 years of use. If you assume the new panel has good degredation performance it'll outperform the 2015 panel at install time until roughly 2135! Or to tie it to the current article, vertical panels installed today outperform perfectly pitched panels from 2015. There are physics-based limits to how high the efficiency can get with one material, but people are already selling modules with extra layers that work around that limit.

deadbabe 1y ago

Could it be feasible to have a program where you purchase solar panels on some farm somewhere and then whatever their power output is you get discounted on your electric bill? Residential solar power is never going to take off. Everything I’ve seen about it is a scam: you finance a massive purchase and then you pretty much spend the next 30 years paying for panels that you can’t take with you when you move and you can’t even sell the home while it has a lien from the solar company. And on top of that you spend so much money it takes forever to break even anyway. Pointless. And the panels ruin the aesthetics of your house! Fuck this. If you could have your panels mounted remotely far away then you don’t care what they look like and you can even move to a new house and still reap their benefits. You could even buy more panels than what your house or apartment could fit.

cindyllm 1y ago
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cman1444 1y ago
What's the advantage of the end user financing this? If it would be a good investment for an individual, surely it would be an even better investment for institutional money.
- deadbabe 1y ago
  The funding of the solar panels would be distributed across lots of smaller players instead of requiring heroic amounts of capital from a few organizations. Why would an institution invest in panels if the return is purely in watts? But who knows, I’m not a financial engineer so not sure if this works well.

ratelimitsteve 1y ago

>In his preferred orientation, one side faces South, while the other faces North. [Dave] is in the Northern Hemisphere, so those of you Down Under would have to do the opposite, pointing one face North and the other South. I'm sure that they mean there's a side A and a side B in some way that I don't quite understand but boy howdy does this sentence seem meaningless absent its context.