Long-term performance analysis of copper indium gallium selenide thin-film photovoltaic modules

Ashwani Kaul; Shirish Pethe; Neelkanth G. Dhere

doi:10.1117/1.JPE.2.022005

27 November 2012 Long-term performance analysis of copper indium gallium selenide thin-film photovoltaic modules

Ashwani Kaul, Shirish Pethe, Neelkanth G. Dhere

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Photonics for Energy, Vol. 2, Issue 1, 022005 (November 2012). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JPE.2.022005

Abstract

Current accelerated qualification tests of photovoltaic (PV) modules mostly assist in avoiding premature failures but can neither duplicate changes occurring in the field nor predict useful product lifetime. Therefore, outdoor monitoring of field-deployed thin-film PV modules was undertaken at FSEC with the goal of assessing their performance in hot and humid climate under high system-voltage operation. Significant and comparable degradation rate of −5.13±1.53% and −4.5±1.46% per year was found using PVUSA type regression analysis for the positive and negative strings, respectively of 40W glass-to-glass Cu-In-Ga-Se (CIGS) thin-film PV modules in the hot and humid climate of Florida. Using the current-voltage measurements, it was found that the performance degradation within the PV array was mainly due to a few (8% to 12%) modules that had substantially higher degradation. The remaining modules within the array continued to show reasonable performance (>96% of the rated power after ∼ four years).

Citation Download Citation

Ashwani Kaul, Shirish Pethe, and Neelkanth G. Dhere "Long-term performance analysis of copper indium gallium selenide thin-film photovoltaic modules," Journal of Photonics for Energy 2(1), 022005 (27 November 2012). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JPE.2.022005

Published: 27 November 2012

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