Reliability Study of c-Si PV Module Mounted on a Concrete Slab by Thermal Cycling Using Electroluminescence Scanning: Application in Future Solar Roadways

Abstract

Several tests were conducted to ratify the reliability and durability of the solar photovoltaic (PV) devices before deployment in the real field (non-ideal conditions). In the real field, the temperature of the PV modules was varied during the day and night. Nowadays, people have been bearing in mind the deployment of PV modules on concrete roads to make use of the space accessible on roads. In this regard, a comparative study on the failure and degradation behaviors of crystalline Si PV modules with and without a concrete slab was executed via a thermal cycling stress test. The impact of the concrete slab on the performance degradation of PV modules was evaluated. Electroluminescence (EL) results showed that the defect due to thermal cycling (TC) stress was reduced in the PV module with a concrete slab. The power loss due to the thermal cycling was reduced by approximately 1% using a concrete slab for 200 cycles. The Rsh value was reduced to approximately 91% and 71% after thermal cycling of 200 cycles for reference PV modules, respectively. The value of I0 was increased to approximately 3.1 and 2.9 times the initial value for the PV modules without and with concrete, respectively.

Condition Assessment of Solar Modules by Flash Test and Electroluminescence Test

“…Cell breakage is observed in cells B6, F1 and I3 [25]. For five more wafers, a large, obligated cell element can be observed (B2, F1, G1, G6, and I6) [31][32][33][34][35].…”

“…Cell breakage is observed in cells B6, F and I3 [25]. For five more wafers, a large, obligated cell element can be observed (B2, F1 G1, G6, and I6) [31][32][33][34][35]. Figure 11 shows the electroluminescence snapping of a solar module (PV50239 whose power was able to provide manufacturer power during the flash test.…”

A Novel Improved Variational Mode Decomposition-Temporal Convolutional Network-Gated Recurrent Unit with Multi-Head Attention Mechanism for Enhanced Photovoltaic Power Forecasting

“…The above methods provide inspiration and motivation for the proposed forecasting strategy in this paper. However, the actual photovoltaic power is greatly interfered by the external environment and has the characteristics of instability and obvious intermittent fluctuation [35,36]. In addition, there are differences in photovoltaic power forecasting models under different environments, and a single model cannot meet the actual production needs.…”

PV System Failures Diagnosis Based on Multiscale Dispersion Entropy

“…PV systems can be prone to degradation faults and electrical faults with different occurrences and severity [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]. The meteorological conditions highly impact the PV aging velocity, as a hot-humid climate and thermal cycling have a negative effect on PV modules [ 6 , 7 ]. The conventional detection and protection methods available in the industry are already used in PV plants and allow to avoid electrical faults such as line–ground (L-G) faults, line–line (L-L) faults, arc series faults and open-circuit (OC) faults [ 8 , 9 ].…”