Canadian Solar is making solar energy more reliable and cost-efficient by improving testing methods to identify UV-induced degradation in solar panels faster.
While solar electricity continues to become cheaper, customers can risk losing the benefits enabled by higher efficiencies in photovoltaics due to UV-induced degradation and inferior testing methodologies.
Canadian Solar is improving the reliability of next-generation photovoltaics through the development and testing of high-efficiency solar cells to ensure reliable, low-cost clean energy. A key consideration is balancing the trade-offs between efficiency gains and long-term reliability.
With support from the Trailblazer for Recycling and Clean Energy (TRaCE), UNSW researchers are collaborating with Canadian Solar to investigate the evolving dynamics in the cost, efficiency and reliability of silicon solar modules.
“Canadian Solar highly appreciates UNSW’s expertise in the solar research field. Many fruitful results were generated in the past collaboration between the two teams,” said Dr Xusheng Wang of Canadian Solar. “Our new cooperation under TRaCE will continue to work on the reliability of solar products, helping the solar industry to deliver the most suitable solar solutions to the end users.”
With system components like inverters and installation now dominating the cost of electricity in photovoltaics, their research focus has shifted to enhancing cell efficiency to bring costs down.
“Improved reliability for emerging high-efficiency photovoltaics can certainly drive down solar electricity costs, but increased efficiency can risk faster degradation of silicon solar modules, especially when testing processes have not kept paced with technological advances,” warned Professor Bram Hoex, the Deputy Head of UNSW’s School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering.
Rapid testing for greater reliability
Known for his ground-breaking work on aluminium oxide for improving the efficiency of silicon solar cells, a technology employed in the current dominant PERC as well as emerging TOPCon solar cell, Prof Hoex is passionate about accelerating the energy transition by contributing to higher efficiency and more reliable photovoltaic technologies.
“To address new types of failure in PV modules fabricated using emerging cell technology, we have discovered an efficient method to make the newly emerged cell technology intrinsically stable, allowing these high-efficiency cells to be encapsulated with low-cost materials,” explained Prof Hoex.
Working with post-doctoral researcher Dr. Chandany Sen, whose research is in mitigating defects caused by light and moisture in silicon solar cells, Prof Hoex hopes to solve the costly problem of cell degradation.
“During her PhD, Dr Sen developed three techniques that completely eliminate light and elevated temperature-induced degradation in the bulk in mc-Si PERC cells,” he said.
“Through this research, I hope to be able improve the reliability of high-efficiency solar cells by addressing issues related to thermal mismatch and moisture-induced degradation,” explained Dr Sen.
Also joining the Canadian Solar research collaboration is post-doctoral researcher Dr Muhammad Umair Khan, whose recent work focuses on innovative solutions for solar cell efficiency and durability challenges.
“My interest is in sodium ion-related degradation in solar cells. I am also keen to improve methods for testing silicon PERC and TOPCon solar cells and identifying failures in silicon solar cells/modules.”
“By analysing the reliability of solar panels through accelerated experimentation, we expect our collaboration with UNSW to identify new methods that will help us reduce the testing process from months to hours,” said Dr Wang.
“This will have a huge market impact: when we eventually feed test results directly into the production process, we also anticipate seeing costs reduced without compromising performance – as well as faster deployment of new technologies,” Prof Hoex explained.
About the research
UNSW’s research with Canadian Solar led by Professor Bram Hoex focusses on the further development of rapid testing techniques as well the commercialisation of mitigation technologies.
It employs innovative testing methods designed to be exponentially faster than current standards, dramatically accelerating the pace of solar cell research and development, with a strong focus on testing at the solar cell level. This is because an intrinsically stable solar cell is the most effective approach towards long-term stable photovoltaics
One of its testing methods has already been accepted as a new SEMI standard for the field, and the team expects several more standards to be developed from this project. The team’s work has already identified several new failure modes in the next generation of industrial silicon solar cells. If unresolved, such faults could lead to significant failures in the field negatively affecting the economics of photovoltaics.
Learn more about why solar panel performance can decline and the collaboration between UNSW and Canadian Solar to improve the reliability of next-generation photovoltaics.
