First Solar’s PV module tech completes 25 years of testing at NREL – pv magazine International

December 14, 2020 Eric Wesoff

From pv magazine USA

It’s 1995 and Invoice Clinton is president. The one discussions of world warming are in technical papers and oil firm board rooms. Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio is No. 1 on the charts and Waterfalls by TLC is No. 2. America leads the world in photo voltaic panel manufacturing, with 35 MW constructed.

That’s the identical 12 months that cadmium telluride photo voltaic panels constructed by First Photo voltaic’s earlier incarnation, Photo voltaic Cells Inc., have been put in at NREL’s outdoor test facility (OTF) in Golden, Colorado.

These panels are nonetheless performing, as is First Solar — in contrast to a lot of the 1995-vintage distributors that planted their panels at NREL within the earlier century, resembling Shell, Amoco, and Arco.

NREL’s OTF

First Photo voltaic’s thin-film photo voltaic modules hit 25 years of constantly monitored efficiency testing – as a part of the longest-running analysis mission at NREL’s OTF. Whereas the OTF is supplied to carry out accelerated testing, nothing is a match for years within the subject. NREL makes use of multi-year out of doors testing to validate its accelerated testing. A photo voltaic module with an extended lifetime produces extra worth and fewer waste.

The practically 40 check beds surrounding the OTF constructing enable researchers to chart {the electrical} output efficiency of PV modules underneath out of doors circumstances. They will use the OTF to check the long-term efficiency and stability of PV modules and programs underneath commonplace and accelerated out of doors circumstances. As well as, they will measure the efficiency of hybrid programs, based on NREL.

One I-V system utilized by the researchers to measure {the electrical} output efficiency of PV modules underneath out of doors circumstances (and as shut as potential to plain check circumstances) is the Normal Out of doors Measurement System. It is a fastened system on which modules are positioned for testing and might monitor the solar. NREL seems to be to make measurements underneath a transparent sky, with irradiance between 950 and 1,050 W/m², and as near 25 C as potential.

Check outcomes

First Photo voltaic’s origin story contains Division of Vitality funding to analysis cadmium telluride PV know-how within the early Nineties. Among the many corporations concerned within the analysis was Photo voltaic Cells Inc., which later grew to become First Photo voltaic.

“We all the time meant to maintain the modules/arrays put in on the OTF so long as the applied sciences have been related to get very long-term reliability information,” stated Ben Kroposki, an NREL engineer who put in the preliminary PV modules for First Photo voltaic on the OTF.

The preliminary research on First Photo voltaic’s panels revealed that after 5 years, the corporate’s panel degradation amounted to a relative 0.6% a 12 months. NREL now finds, 25 years later, that the long-term degradation of the studied modules was 0.5% a 12 months, with an effectivity, at this time, of round 88% of the unique panel efficiency.

Louis Trippel, VP of product administration at First Photo voltaic, added that the teachings discovered from the testing at NREL offered “incremental confidence to assist help a just lately introduced extension” of its module energy output guarantee from 25 years to 30 years. First Photo voltaic’s modules are warranted at 0.5% degradation per 12 months – however the firm “guides” to 0.4%.

NREL has additionally labored with silicon high-efficiency photo voltaic panel builder SunPower (now Maxeon) to develop a technique to calculate solar panel degradation. After eight years of power efficiency information, SunPower panels have been proven to degrade at a median fee of 0.2% per 12 months. Trina Solar gives a 30-year linear guarantee and a 0.5% annual degradation fee for its silicon photo voltaic panels.

However most photo voltaic corporations haven’t examined their panels for the precise length of the guarantee time period.

For the total story, please go to our pv magazine USA web site.