TÜV Rheinland's Global research project on the performance of PV Systems enters next phase

In the next three years, an international team of researchers, consultants and industry led by TÜV Rheinland and the Fraunhofer ISE will investigate the reliability and performance of photovoltaic systems in practice. The project, which is being conducted in collaboration with the Institute for Solar Energy Research Hamelin, aims to increase security for investors, project developers and operators of solar power plants by systematically collecting, analyzing and presenting yield data from the operation of photovoltaic systems around the world. The objective is to allow the energy yields of photovoltaic systems in various climate zones to be estimated and predicted as precisely as possible in the future. Funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, the project continues research started back in 2010.

To record the performance ratio of the maximum possible and actual energy yields in the various climate zones, the researchers and laboratories involved are spending several years collecting increased amounts of field data about module defects and system failures. Existing outdoor test fields that belong to the partners monitored throughout the world are being used for this purpose. Various methods of assessing the condition of photovoltaic modules are also being coordinated and evaluated. These include the visual inspections of PV modules, output measurements, infrared thermography and electroluminescence imaging, which allow the inside of the modules to be examined in a non-destructive manner. The data collected will be fed into various yield prediction models, where it can be verified and validated.

Finally, the experts will analyze the technical assessments obtained from the business plans for photovoltaic power plants and check whether the technical and economic evaluations are consistent. At the end of the project, a world map is to be published (among other things) with an overview of the performance ratio for solar systems that maps the corresponding data with high precision.

The project “Performance and Reliability of Photovoltaic Power Systems” (Task 13), which is part of the “Photovoltaic Power System Programme” of the International Energy Agency (IEA), runs until 2018. In addition to the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA), the programme includes experts from Australia, Austria, Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Thailand and the USA among its members. The researchers will disseminate interim and final results of the Task 13 work on a regular basis.