This paper describes an effort to inspect and evaluate PV modules in order to determine what failure or degradation modes are occurring in field installations. This paper will report on the results of six site visits, including the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) Hedge Array, Tu cson Electric Power (TEP) Springerville, Central Florida Utility, Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC), the TEP Solar Test Yard, and University of To ledo installations. The effort here makes use of a recently developed field inspection data collection protocol, and the results were input into a corresponding database. The results of this work have also been used to develop a draft of the IEC standard for climate and application specific accelerated stress testing beyond module qualification.

This paper investigates the feasibility of using fixed resistors instead of active maximum power tracking as electrical loads for long-term exposure testing of photovoltaic modules and arrays. The method of investigation was to compare resistive versus active loading on two modules for which historic current-voltage data over time were available. Also, a small amorphous silicon array was installed with a resistive load and the performance has been monitored versus time. The major conclusion of this work is that fixed resistive loading is an inexpensive and viable means of loading photovoltaic devices for exposure testing if the resistance value used is close to the ratio of the voltage to the current at the maximum power point under Standard Test Conditions.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract