PV Module and System Reliability Research

While photovoltaic (PV) technologies have experienced widespread success and adoption, continued growth of these technologies - especially new PV technologies - requires ongoing improvements to their reliability and the testing procedures, data, and standards that underpin them. To better understand and address failure mechanisms of PV modules and systems, NREL conducts testing, models failures, analyzes performance data, helps to develop standards, and convenes expert stakeholders. This work is focused both on improving the performance of industry-dominant PV technologies and rapidly de-risking new PV technologies so they can be proven reliable without decades of field testing.