Effect of Operating Temperature on the Performance of Amorphous Silicon Photovoltaic Modules

摘要

Amorphous silicon (a-Si) is a promising thin film technology, although its performance under realistic operating conditions is not yet fully understood. There are several interlinking effects, which should be understood for a better modelling accuracy. This work presents a methodology to resolve the effects of spectrum and temperature and look at the longer term effects of the impact of the thermal operating regime on the annealing potential for installed devices.rnThis study investigates the effect of operating temperature on the performance of amorphous silicon (a-Si) PV modules in the short term as well as in the long term under realistic operation conditions. The short-term behaviour is essentially governed by the temperature coefficient, which will be determined by specific outdoor methods. The long term behaviour appears to be governed by thermal annealing. The measurement approach creates three distinct thermal operating regimes, which will have different minimum, maximum and average temperatures with otherwise identical operating conditions and thus will allow the resolution of the discrepancy between thermal coefficients determined in the laboratory and those measured in realistic operation.