Qualification Testing Versus Quantitative Reliability Testing of PV - Gaining Confidence in a Rapidly Changing Technology: Preprint

Conference · Thu Oct 05 00:00:00 EDT 2017

OSTI ID:1399079

Kurtz, Sarah ^[1]; Repins, Ingrid L ^[1]; Hacke, Peter L ^[1]; Jordan, Dirk ^[1]; Kempe, Michael D ^[1]; Whitfield, Kent ^[2]; Phillips, Nancy ^[3]; Sample, Tony ^[4]; Monokroussos, Christos ^[5]; Hsi, Edward ^[6]; Wohlgemuth, John ^[7]; Seidel, Peter ^[8]; Jahn, Ulrike ^[5]; Tanahashi, Tadanori ^[9]; Chen, Yingnan ^[10]; Jaeckel, Bengt ^[2]; Yamamichi, Masaaki ^[11]

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1. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
2. Underwriters Laboratories
3. DuPont
4. European Commission
5. TUV Rheinland
6. Swiss RE
7. PowerMark Corporation
8. First Solar
9. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
10. China General Certification Center
11. RTS Corporation

Continued growth of PV system deployment would be enhanced by quantitative, low-uncertainty predictions of the degradation and failure rates of PV modules and systems. The intended product lifetime (decades) far exceeds the product development cycle (months), limiting our ability to reduce the uncertainty of the predictions for this rapidly changing technology. Yet, business decisions (setting insurance rates, analyzing return on investment, etc.) require quantitative risk assessment. Moving toward more quantitative assessments requires consideration of many factors, including the intended application, consequence of a possible failure, variability in the manufacturing, installation, and operation, as well as uncertainty in the measured acceleration factors, which provide the basis for predictions based on accelerated tests. As the industry matures, it is useful to periodically assess the overall strategy for standards development and prioritization of research to provide a technical basis both for the standards and the analysis related to the application of those. To this end, this paper suggests a tiered approach to creating risk assessments. Recent and planned potential improvements in international standards are also summarized.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1399079
• Report Number(s): NREL/CP-5J00-70163
• Resource Relation: Conference: Presented at the 2017 European PV Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition, 25-29 September 2017, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
PV reliability
accelerated testing
risk assessment
lifetime prediction