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Accessing the performance of individual cells of fully encapsulated PV modules using a commercial digital light processing projector

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conference contribution
posted on 2018-09-10, 13:13 authored by George Koutsourakis, Martin BlissMartin Bliss, Tom BettsTom Betts, Ralph Gottschalg
Accessing the electrical parameters of individual cells in fully encapsulated photovoltaic (PV) modules can be a cumbersome and time-consuming procedure. It usually requires mechanical shading, which is achieved by using meshes. This limits the control and variability of shading, as there is always a limited variety of mesh patterns available. In this work digital projection technology is utilised as the light source to achieve this. Partial shading can be applied rapidly and performance parameters of individual cells in fully encapsulated modules can be acquired. This is demonstrated in this work using a custom mini module. Individual cells can be accessed even in the case that bypass diodes are included. Performance information of individual cells acquired with such a system can be used for studying upscaling losses or degradation mechanisms for commercial or research PV modules.

Funding

This work was funded through the European Metrology Research Programme 16ENG02 PV-Enerate. EMRP is jointly funded by the EMRP participating countries within EURAMET and the European Union.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

14th Photovoltaic Science, Applications and Technology Conference

Pages

17 - 20 (4)

Citation

KOUTSOURAKIS, G. ... et al., 2018. Accessing the performance of individual cells of fully encapsulated PV modules using a commercial digital light processing projector. IN: Proceedings of the 14th Photovoltaic Science, Applications and Technology Conference (PVSAT-14), London, UK, 18-19 April, pp. 17-20.

Publisher

© The Solar Energy Society

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-04-19

Publication date

2018

Notes

This is a conference paper.

ISBN

0904963845

Publisher version

Language

  • en

Location

London, UK

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