Effects of Potential Induced Degradation on Solar PV Module based on temperature and humidity

Abstract

Due to the increased demand for renewable energy sources, the manufacturing of solar cells and photovoltaic arrays has advanced considerably in recent years. Photovoltaic (PV) is considered to be one of the most committed source of renewable energy technologies after hydro and wind power. PV is one method to generate electrical power by converting the solar radiation into DC voltage by using semiconductors that exercise the photovoltaic effect by using solar panels which composed of number of solar cells containing photovoltaic materials, for example mono-crystalline, poly-crystalline and amorphous silicon as well as cadmium telluride (CdTe) and copper indium gallium selenite/sulfide (CIGS). Till now, nearly 100 countries use photovoltaic as a main source of renewable energy, done by various ways of installation, e.g. on the roof top or walls of buildings or as a power plant string arrays.

This paper is focusing on PID of wafer based standard p-type silicon technologyaiming on increasing life times for solar panels onceexposed to external potentials in the field. A test setup ispresented for simulation of the PID in the lab and theinfluence of cell properties on PID is demonstrated inorder to reveal the cell being the precondition for the PID.However, PID can also be stopped or minimized on paneland system level as shown in the paper.