Annual degradation rates and soiling losses of photovoltaic systems
composed of recent crystalline silicon technologies in Japan
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the annual degradation rates
of photovoltaic (PV) systems composed of PV modules based on recent
crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV technologies. We investigated the annual
degradation rates of four PV systems composed of different c-Si PV
technologies. Furthermore, the effects of soiling on the annual
degradation rates of these PV systems were examined. The results
obtained indicate that the apparent annual degradation rates of the PV
strings before surface cleaning were 0.8, 1.6, 1.4, and 1.2%/year,
respectively, because of optical losses due to dust particles, although
the surfaces of the PV arrays had been washed by plentiful rainfall
under subtropical climatic conditions. However, the inherent annual
degradation rates of the PV strings after surface cleaning were 0.1,
0.6, 0.0, and 0.3%/year, respectively. These low degradation rates
indicate that the PV systems composed of the recent c-Si PV technologies
all offered quite stable performance.