Joint DOE/industry photovoltaic system reliability program
- Sandia National Labs., NM (United States)
- Utility Photo Voltaic Group, Washington, DC (United States); and others
To achieve the lowest life-cycle cost (LCC), photovoltaic (PV) systems must have the optimum mix of low first cost, low operation and maintenance (O&M) cost, and high availability. Additionally, the long-term health of the photovoltaic (PV) industry requires that PV systems work as expected. Although PV modules now enjoy high reliability due to a significant multi-year effort by both the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and industry, the same is not always true of PV systems. Even for systems that do operate reliably, customers, suppliers, and manufacturers can benefit from knowing what O&M expenses to expect. This knowledge will reduce technology risk to the customer and improve likelihood of commitment to PV projects. System integrators and utilities may benefit from O&M cost information to improve system designs, to properly price service agreements and warranties, and to optimize maintenance strategies. The DOE and component manufacturers may benefit from identifying cost drivers to optimally focus research and quality assurance resources to improve product reliability. This paper discusses the first of five tasks identified for this project, quantifying system reliability and life cycle cost by collecting, analyzing and reporting data on PV system reliability and cost. Industry participants collect the necessary O&M data on systems they are monitoring. Sandia provides support in the form of assistance identifying data that needs to be collected, helping develop forms or databases to collect the data, and analyzing the data.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 519114
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-97-1159C; CONF-970953-2; ON: DE97007466; TRN: 97:004947
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 26. IEEE photovoltaic specialists conference, Anaheim, CA (United States), 29 Sep - 3 Oct 1997; Other Information: PBD: 1997
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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