Statistical Modeling of Photovoltaic Reliability Using Accelerated Degradation Techniques (Poster)

We introduce a cutting-edge life-testing technique, accelerated degradation testing (ADT), for PV reliability testing. The ADT technique is a cost-effective and flexible reliability testing method with multiple (MADT) and Step-Stress (SSADT) variants. In an environment with limited resources, including equipment (chambers), test units, and testing time, these techniques can provide statisticallyrigorous prediction of lifetime and other interesting parameters, such as failure rate, warranty time, mean time to failure, degradation rate, activation energy, acceleration factor, and upper limit level of stress. J-V characterization can be used for degradation data and the generalized Eyring model can be used for the thermal-humidity stress condition. The SSADT model can be constructed basedon the cumulative damage model (CEM), which assumes that the remaining test united are failed according to cumulative density function of current stress level regardless of the history on previous stress levels.