Solar panels at the Energy Department's
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are ubiquitous to the point
of practically being invisible, but new rows of photovoltaic (PV)
modules installed on the southern edge of campus are intended to attract
attention.
The newest PV modules are being installed to
measure how their efficiency at converting sunlight into electricity
changes over time. That change, called the degradation rate, will be
posted on NREL's website along with the manufacturers' names.
To start, 50 solar PV modules made by three
manufacturers will be deployed in 2017. Then, each year for the
following two years, additional sets of 50 modules made by other
companies will be added.
The test centers to validate new technologies and to measure the performance of solar PV modules
“We're going to buy up modules that represent the
average cross-section of installed modules each year in the United
States and see how they do over time,” said Chris Deline, an engineer at
NREL who also serves as director for Colorado's two regional test
centers.
The test centers, funded by the Energy Department,
are used to validate new technologies and measure the performance of
solar modules over time. Across the NREL campus, solar modules are
integrated into the buildings, including the roof of the five-story
parking garage near the new array field. Another building, the Outdoor
Test Facility (OTF), has an adjacent solar array field but doesn't have
much room for more modules on its concrete pads.
“The main difference is this large grassy area gives us the capability of having larger systems,” Deline said.
“Over at the OTF, because of our space constraints,
we can only have 8 or 10 modules for a given system. With this one we're
able to do side-by-side comparisons of larger systems.”
More PV modules to be added each year
Once completed, the new solar array field will house
four rows of PV modules. The first row, already in place, is for
partner manufacturers' modules that NREL is either studying or comparing
to similar products. For example, a California company, SolarCity, has
NREL testing its modules against those made by a Chinese manufacturer.
Further along the row, high voltage (up to 1,500 V
to represent the high voltages used in some PV systems today) is applied
to modules of a range of constructions. This helps quantify their
susceptibility to degradation associated with the leakage currents that
can occur at these high system voltages. How the modules do at NREL will
be assessed against the performance of identical setups in Singapore
and China.
Ongoing measurement of the new solar modules is part
of the PV Lifetime project, a new effort led by Sandia National
Laboratories. In addition to the modules deployed at NREL, similar
arrays will be installed at regional test centers at Sandia and in
Florida. The data collected will be published on NREL's website.
source: http://www.solarserver.com
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