Annual degradation rates and soiling losses of photovoltaic systems
composed of recent crystalline silicon technologies in temperate climate
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, comprising p-type multi-crystalline silicon with a
passivated emitter rear cell, n-type silicon heterojunction, p-type
single-crystalline silicon with an aluminum back surface field, and
n-type single-crystalline silicon solar cell technologies. These systems
were located in Gunma Prefecture in Japan and were measured over six
years. Furthermore, the effects of soiling on the annual degradation
rates of these PV systems were examined by partially surface cleaning
the PV arrays two times. 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. 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
reasonably stable performance that was reduced by 3.6, 5.5, 7.3, and
4.8%, respectively because of the effects of surface soiling, although
the surfaces of the PV arrays had been washed by plentiful rainfall
under their humid subtropical climatic operating conditions.