Performance and Aging of a 20-Year-Old Silicon PV System

Dirk Jordan; William Marion; Sarah Kurtz; William Sekulic

doi:10.1109/JPHOTOV.2015.2396360

Performance and Aging of a 20-Year-Old Silicon PV System

Dirk Jordan, William Marion, Sarah Kurtz, William Sekulic

Materials Science

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

59 Scopus Citations

Abstract

This paper examines the long-term performance of a 20-year-old crystalline silicon system. The degradation was found to be about 0.8%/year and is consistent with historical averages. In contrast with the majority of historical degradation, the decline for this particular system is more attributable to fill factor (FF) than to short-circuit current (Isc). The underlying cause was determined to be an increase in series resistance. We found no evidence that this system degrades significantly differently from its worst performing strings and modules. Maintenance events during the 20 years were dominated by inverter issues with a total of four replacements.

Original language	American English
Article number	7042258
Pages (from-to)	744-751
Number of pages	8
Journal	IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics
Volume	5
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/JPHOTOV.2015.2396360 https://doi.org/10.1109/JPHOTOV.2015.2396360
State	Published - 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2011-2012 IEEE.

NREL Publication Number

NREL/JA-5J00-63250

Keywords

Degradation
durability
field performance
photovoltaic system
reliability

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Performance and Aging of a 20-Year-Old Silicon PV System

Abstract

Bibliographical note

NREL Publication Number

Keywords

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