Accelerated Life Testing and Service Lifetime Prediction for PV Technologies in the Twenty-First Century

Conference · Tue Jul 13 04:00:00 EDT 1999

OSTI ID:9819

Czanderna, A W; Jorgensen, G J

The purposes of this paper are to (1) discuss the necessity for conducting accelerated life testing (ALT) in the early stages of developing new photovoltaic (PV) technologies, (2) elucidate the crucial importance for combining ALT with real-time testing (RTT) in terrestrial environments for promising PV technologies for the 21st century, and (3) outline the essential steps for making a service lifetime prediction (SLP) for any PV technology. The specific objectives are to (a) illustrate the essential need for ALT of complete, encapsulated multilayer PV devices, (b) indicate the typical causes of degradation in PV stacks, (c) elucidate the complexity associated with quantifying the durability of the devices, (d) explain the major elements that constitute a generic SLP methodology, (e) show how the introduction of the SLP methodology in the early stages of new device development can reduce the cost of technology development, and (f) outline the procedure for combining the results of ALT and RTT, establishing degradation mechanisms, using sufficient numbers of samples, and applying the SLP methodology to produce a SLP for existing or new PV technologies.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Lab., Golden, CO (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Department of Energy (US)
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-99GO10337
• OSTI ID: 9819
• Report Number(s): NREL/CP-520-26710; ON: DE00009819
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
ACCELERATED LIFE TESTING (ALF)
FORECASTING
LIFETIME
METHODOLOGY
PHOTOVOLTAIC (PV)
SERVICE LIFETIME PREDICTION (SLP)
TESTING