Optical Characterization of Different Thin Film Module Technologies

Ebner, R.; Kubicek, Bernhard; Újvári, G.; Novalin, S.; Rennhofer, Marcus; Halwachs, Martin

doi:10.1155/2015/159458

Cited by 19 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Moreover, the haziness that is a type of discoloration has been observed in the modules which can create shading and reduce the module performance. However, it should be noted that thin‐film technologies always have a high degradation in its initial phase due light soaking effect before it becomes stable and the same can also be seen from this study 66,67 . Some researchers have also established this fact such as the Ye et al 68 have reported high degradation rate of 2% during the first year of operation.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 78%

“…The white spots have been observed on both water‐ and land‐mounted modules. These white spots are referred to as shunts in the CdTe module and may be caused by the presence of defects and impurities during the manufacturing process of the CdTe module 66 . Due to exposure of CdTe modules to the outdoor environment, these defects appear and can be identified visually which eventually decreases FF and increases degradation.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Comparative degradation analysis of different photovoltaic technologies on experimentally simulated water bodies and estimation of evaporation loss reduction

Kumar

Gupta

2020

Progress in Photovoltaics

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Degradation of photovoltaic (PV) systems on water bodies can be matter of serious concern due to high humid environmental conditions above water surface as compared with land surface. The primary objective of this study is to assess the reliability of various PV technologies for megawatt‐scale installations by analyzing their degradation on water bodies. An experimental study has been performed for 13 months on three commercially available PV technologies, namely, multicrystalline‐Si (m‐Si), heterojunction intrinsic thin layer (HIT), and cadmium telluride (CdTe). Degradation of these PV technologies on water and comparison of their degradation with respective land‐mounted PV technologies have been presented. Various approaches have been implemented for degradation analysis. The degradation in electrical parameters of all PV modules has been measured. Also, a mathematical PV model has been developed to analyze the internal parameters degradation in different PV technologies. Moreover, thermal imaging has been conducted to distinguish various defects in all PV modules. Evaporation reduction is a significant aspect of water‐mounted PV systems, and thus, analytical model to estimate evaporation has been developed and experimentally validated in this study. The HIT PV technology is observed to be degrading almost at the same rate of about 0.50% on both water and land surfaces, whereas degradation of water‐mounted m‐Si module has been found 1.32% which is significantly higher than the corresponding land‐mounted module which has degradation of 0.93%. Degradation in CdTe modules is 1.68% on water, which is marginally higher than corresponding land‐based module that has degradation of 1.41%.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 78%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative degradation analysis of different photovoltaic technologies on experimentally simulated water bodies and estimation of evaporation loss reduction

Kumar

Gupta

2020

Progress in Photovoltaics

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“…It is a non-destructive measurement technique, which provides fast, real-time and two-dimensional distributions of characteristic features from PV modules [17][18][19]. In addition, IRT can be performed in illuminated or dark conditions [16,[20][21][22].…”

Section: Irt Versus El Inspectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel Utility-Scale Photovoltaic Plant Electroluminescence Maintenance Technique by Means of Bidirectional Power Inverter Controller

et al. 2020

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Nowadays, photovoltaic (PV) silicon plants dominate the growth in renewable energies generation. Utility-scale photovoltaic plants (USPVPs) have increased exponentially in size and power in the last decade and, therefore, it is crucial to develop optimum maintenance techniques. One of the most promising maintenance techniques is the study of electroluminescence (EL) images as a complement of infrared thermography (IRT) analysis. However, its high cost has prevented its use regularly up to date. This paper proposes a maintenance methodology to perform on-site EL inspections as efficiently as possible. First, current USPVP characteristics and the requirements to apply EL on them are studied. Next, an increase over the automation level by means of adding automatic elements in the current PV plant design is studied. The new elements and their configuration are explained, and a control strategy for applying this technique on large photovoltaic plants is developed. With the aim of getting on-site EL images on a real plant, a PV inverter has been developed to validate the proposed methodology on a small-scale solar plant. Both the electrical parameters measured during the tests and the images taken have been analysed. Finally, the implementation cost of the solution has been calculated and optimised. The results conclude the technical viability to perform on-site EL inspections on PV plants without the need to measure and analyse the panel defects out of the PV installation.

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“…Although it has been traditionally applied only with the PV plant in operation, which has the great advantage of not losing energy, it can also be applied while injecting current to the modules in the fourth quadrant, simultaneously or subsequent to EL inspections. Some authors term these two kinds of thermographic inspections as outdoor (illuminated) and indoor (dark) conditions, respectively [ 10 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ]. However, novel research in PV systems propose the use of a power inverter with bidirectional power flow capability for utility-scale PV plants maintenance, using the EL technique, together with the flexibility provided by this type of devices [ 19 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infrared Thermography for the Detection and Characterization of Photovoltaic Defects: Comparison between Illumination and Dark Conditions

Gallardo-Saavedra

Hernández-Callejo

Alonso-García

et al. 2020

Sensors

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Newly installed renewable power capacity has been increasing incredibly in recent years. For example, in 2018, 181 GW were installed worldwide. In this scenario, in which photovoltaic (PV) energy plays a leading role, it is essential for main players involved in PV plants to be able to identify the failure modes in PV modules in order to reduce investment risk, to focus their maintenance efforts on preventing those failures and to improve longevity and performance of PV plants. Among the different systems for defects detection, conventional infrared thermography (IRT) is the fastest and least expensive technique. It can be applied in illumination and in dark conditions, both indoor and outdoor. These two methods can provide complementary results for the same kind of defects, which is analyzed and characterized in this research. Novel investigation in PV systems propose the use of a power inverter with bidirectional power flow capability for PV plants maintenance, which extremely facilitates the electroluminescence (EL) inspections, as well as the outdoor IRT in the fourth quadrant.

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Optical Characterization of Different Thin Film Module Technologies

Cited by 19 publications

References 3 publications

Comparative degradation analysis of different photovoltaic technologies on experimentally simulated water bodies and estimation of evaporation loss reduction

Comparative degradation analysis of different photovoltaic technologies on experimentally simulated water bodies and estimation of evaporation loss reduction

Novel Utility-Scale Photovoltaic Plant Electroluminescence Maintenance Technique by Means of Bidirectional Power Inverter Controller

Infrared Thermography for the Detection and Characterization of Photovoltaic Defects: Comparison between Illumination and Dark Conditions

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