TY - GEN
T1 - Acceleration factor for damp heat testing of PV modules
AU - Bala Subramaniyan, Arun
AU - Sinha, Archana
AU - Pore, Shantanu
AU - Gopalakrishna, Hamsini
AU - Pan, Rong
AU - Tamizhmani, Govindasamy
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) under Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) award number DE-EE0007138 (PREDICTS 2).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 SPIE.
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - Interconnect Metallization System (IMS) degradation of photovoltaic (PV) modules is one among the major degradation modes in the field caused by higher operating temperatures and daily/seasonal/cloud cyclic temperatures. Usually, the acceleration factor (AF) and activation energy (Ea) of IMS degradation are determined based on power degradation data. Using power degradation data may not be fully representative of a specific mechanism since the power drop could be caused by multiple degradation mechanisms. In this paper, we have used the series resistance (Rs) increase, instead of power degradation, to obtain the AF and Ea for IMS degradation mechanism in the damp heat test (85°C/85% RH). The degradation data were sourced from our qualification damp heat test database with 94 crystalline silicon modules, and two field databases of Arizona and New York climates with 615 and 236 crystalline silicon modules, respectively. A 3-step approach was implemented to determine the AF for the damp heat testing. First, the AF for the field-to-field degradation was determined based on Rs degradation rates of the modules in Arizona and New York. Second, the Ea was determined based on the AF, and hourly differences in field-to-field module temperature and relative humidity. Third, the AF was determined based on Rs increase in the damp heat test and the Ea determined using the field data in the second step. A model based on modified Peck's equation was used to determine a generic AF for the Rs increase in qualification damp heat testing. This approach is useful to predict the service lifetime and reliability of PV modules for specific climatic regions.
AB - Interconnect Metallization System (IMS) degradation of photovoltaic (PV) modules is one among the major degradation modes in the field caused by higher operating temperatures and daily/seasonal/cloud cyclic temperatures. Usually, the acceleration factor (AF) and activation energy (Ea) of IMS degradation are determined based on power degradation data. Using power degradation data may not be fully representative of a specific mechanism since the power drop could be caused by multiple degradation mechanisms. In this paper, we have used the series resistance (Rs) increase, instead of power degradation, to obtain the AF and Ea for IMS degradation mechanism in the damp heat test (85°C/85% RH). The degradation data were sourced from our qualification damp heat test database with 94 crystalline silicon modules, and two field databases of Arizona and New York climates with 615 and 236 crystalline silicon modules, respectively. A 3-step approach was implemented to determine the AF for the damp heat testing. First, the AF for the field-to-field degradation was determined based on Rs degradation rates of the modules in Arizona and New York. Second, the Ea was determined based on the AF, and hourly differences in field-to-field module temperature and relative humidity. Third, the AF was determined based on Rs increase in the damp heat test and the Ea determined using the field data in the second step. A model based on modified Peck's equation was used to determine a generic AF for the Rs increase in qualification damp heat testing. This approach is useful to predict the service lifetime and reliability of PV modules for specific climatic regions.
KW - Acceleration factor
KW - Activation energy
KW - Damp heat testing
KW - Interconnect metallization system
KW - PV module
KW - Reliability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85056904244&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85056904244&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1117/12.2322051
DO - 10.1117/12.2322051
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85056904244
T3 - Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
BT - New Concepts in Solar and Thermal Radiation Conversion and Reliability
A2 - Munday, Jeremy N.
A2 - Kempe, Michael D.
A2 - Bermel, Peter
PB - SPIE
T2 - New Concepts in Solar and Thermal Radiation Conversion and Reliability 2018
Y2 - 19 August 2018 through 21 August 2018
ER -