Austrian scientists investigated the impact of various backsheet and encapsulant materials mixtures on module efficiency and degradation. This led them to develop a mannequin to quantify the degradation charges of various supplies, probably serving to producers determine higher, longer-lasting supplies for these essential parts. within the module.
Together with the speedy growth of PV cell expertise, different parts and supplies that go right into a module are all the time in want of enchancment. Polymer supplies generally used for backsheets and encapsulants play an essential position in defending the inside of a module from the weather, and with greater efficiency to guard, and rising expectations in regards to the lifetime of a PV module and prolonged efficiency, the suppliers of those supplies function with the occasions.
“The selection of polymers has a major affect on the properties of PV modules not just for effectivity however extra importantly for reliability, since most PV module degradation modes are immediately associated to polymer degradation and materials interplay with of polymer parts,” stated the scientists behind it. new work on understanding polymer degradation in PV modules.
The analysis, led by the OFI Austrian Analysis Institute for Chemistry and Know-how, goals to quantify the affect of those polymers on PV efficiency and degradation over time and to develop fashions for degradation that may be helpful to producers. to pick new supplies with little or no monitor report in PV installations.
“A number of gigawatts of modules with new applied sciences and supplies could be produced and put in with out enough expertise concerning long-term reliability,” the group stated. “Within the worst case, this led to sudden degradation mechanisms a number of years after discipline deployment, which weren’t predicted by laboratory accelerated testing, reminiscent of potential-induced degradation (PID) or backsheet cracking.”
The staff produced and examined six cell modules with totally different mixtures of encapsulant and backsheet – together with the present trade customary encapsulant materials ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA), and two others which can be at the moment seeing speedy business growth – polyolefin elastomer and thermoplastic polyolefin. The backsheet supplies included within the research are polyethylene terephthalate laminated with a fluorinated polymer layer (PPF), and coextruded polypropylene (CPO).
All doable mixtures of those supplies are subjected to accelerated growing old assessments, run at 85 C and 85% humidity for as much as 6,000 hours. The outcomes from the assessments are within the paper “Quantification of the affect of encapsulant and backsheet composition on PV-power and electrical degradation,” which was lately printed in Advances in Photovoltaics.
With information from the take a look at, and extra measurements from pattern modules collected from the 2015-18 interval, the staff used statistical modeling to search out hyperlinks between backsheet and encapsulant efficiency and general -module energy and degradation. The outcomes confirmed that the mix of TPO encapsulant and CPO backsheet achieved the best preliminary efficiency, and that modules with EVA encapsulant confirmed sooner degradation than both of the polyolefin based mostly supplies.
The group stated that its technique affords an instance of how the position of supplies in a roundabout way concerned within the module’s vitality manufacturing could be quantified, and that in additional developments the modeling technique can be utilized to find out supplies that assist producers meet the necessities for longer life. , with some now anticipating the modules to proceed producing energy for 40 years or longer.
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