Long-term performance degradation of PV power plant operating under harsh environmental conditions
Room : Polytech, B2 – C204
Speaker: Dr. Daha Hassan Daher
Dr. Daha Hassan Daher is the Head of LENR
Laboratoire des Énergies Nouvelles et Renouvelables
at Centre d’Études et de Recherche de Djibouti CERD
Photovoltaic (PV) installations are being intensively deployed and their capacity are approaching to terawatt around the world. In this context, the long-term performance and reliability of PV modules, component and systems are critical metrics for the economic viability of PV power plants. Furthermore, this is linked to the environmental conditions in which the PV plants operate.
The degradation of a PV module is the gradual deterioration of the characteristics of its constituent parts (cells, metallization, EVA and backsheet). This may affect its ability to operate within the limits of acceptability criteria. Furthermore, the deteriorations are identified as resulting from the operating conditions of the site on which the module has been installed. For harsh climate conditions like in desert, the PV installations are subjected to environmental stress due to high temperature, high humidity, high UV doses and high dust levels. These could lead to accelerate the failure modes and the degradation of the modules performance. Identifying PV degradation or failure modes and their reliability in the field is an important research topic. This seminar will address various PV modules failures diagnosis techniques, namely visual inspection, infrared thermography (IR), ultraviolet fluorescent (UVFL) and current-voltage (I-V) characterization to evaluate the performance and degradation of PV power plant over several years of operations.
Keywords: Photovoltaics (PV) power plant, infrared thermography (IR), ultraviolet fluorescent (UVFL), current-voltage (I-V) characterization, degradation analysis, reliability.