Austrian scientists investigated the impact of various backsheet and encapsulant materials combos on module efficiency and degradation. This led them to develop a mannequin to quantify the degradation charges of various supplies, doubtlessly serving to producers determine higher, longer-lasting supplies for these vital elements. within the module.
Together with the fast growth of PV cell know-how, different elements and supplies that go right into a module are at all times in want of enchancment. Polymer supplies generally used for backsheets and encapsulants play an vital function in defending the inside of a module from the weather, and with greater efficiency to guard, and rising expectations concerning the lifetime of a PV module and prolonged efficiency, the suppliers of those supplies function with the instances.
“The selection of polymers has a big affect on the properties of PV modules not just for effectivity however extra importantly for reliability, since most PV module degradation modes are straight associated to polymer degradation and materials interplay with of polymer elements,” mentioned 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 Expertise, 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 file in PV installations.
“A number of gigawatts of modules with new applied sciences and supplies will be produced and put in with out adequate expertise concerning long-term reliability,” the group mentioned. “Within the worst case, this led to sudden degradation mechanisms a number of years after area deployment, which weren’t predicted by laboratory accelerated testing, similar to potential-induced degradation (PID) or backsheet cracking.”
The workforce produced and examined six cell modules with totally different combos of encapsulant and backsheet – together with the present business customary encapsulant materials ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA), and two others which are presently seeing fast industrial 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 combos of those supplies are subjected to accelerated growing old checks, run at 85 C and 85% humidity for as much as 6,000 hours. The outcomes from the checks are within the paper “Quantification of the affect of encapsulant and backsheet composition on PV-power and electrical degradation,” which was not too long ago revealed in Advances in Photovoltaics.
With knowledge from the check, and extra measurements from pattern modules collected from the 2015-18 interval, the workforce used statistical modeling to seek out hyperlinks between backsheet and encapsulant efficiency and general -module energy and degradation. The outcomes confirmed that the mixture of TPO encapsulant and CPO backsheet achieved the very best preliminary efficiency, and that modules with EVA encapsulant confirmed quicker degradation than both of the polyolefin based mostly supplies.
The group says that its technique affords an instance of how the function of supplies that aren’t straight concerned within the technology of vitality within the module will 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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