TY - GEN
T1 - Co-located Accelerated Testing of Module Level Power Electronics and Associated PV Panels
AU - Flicker, Jack
AU - Lavrova, Olga
AU - Tamizh Mani, Govinda Samy
N1 - Funding Information:
Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc. for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 IEEE.
PY - 2018/11/26
Y1 - 2018/11/26
N2 - In order to study the relative degradation between co-located PV modules and microinverters in an ACPV configuration, four 260 Watt PV modules and four 250 W microinverters purchased on the open market have been co-located in a thermal chamber set at a static temperature (69°C). Instantaneous electrical/thermal measurements have been taken on the microinverters with periodic dark IV measurements on the modules. After over 10,000 hours of testing, no failures or observable degradation have been seen in either the module or microinverter. Using average measured field-temperature data with Military Handbook analysis, this indicates an approximate field use of 44 years of operation lifetime for PV modules, and 13 years of operation for microinverters with reliability of 66.87% with a lower one-sided confidence level of 80%.
AB - In order to study the relative degradation between co-located PV modules and microinverters in an ACPV configuration, four 260 Watt PV modules and four 250 W microinverters purchased on the open market have been co-located in a thermal chamber set at a static temperature (69°C). Instantaneous electrical/thermal measurements have been taken on the microinverters with periodic dark IV measurements on the modules. After over 10,000 hours of testing, no failures or observable degradation have been seen in either the module or microinverter. Using average measured field-temperature data with Military Handbook analysis, this indicates an approximate field use of 44 years of operation lifetime for PV modules, and 13 years of operation for microinverters with reliability of 66.87% with a lower one-sided confidence level of 80%.
KW - DC-AC power converters
KW - materials reliability
KW - photovoltaic systems
KW - power electronics
KW - solar panels
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85059917795&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1109/PVSC.2018.8547961
DO - 10.1109/PVSC.2018.8547961
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85059917795
T3 - 2018 IEEE 7th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, WCPEC 2018 - A Joint Conference of 45th IEEE PVSC, 28th PVSEC and 34th EU PVSEC
SP - 1273
EP - 1277
BT - 2018 IEEE 7th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, WCPEC 2018 - A Joint Conference of 45th IEEE PVSC, 28th PVSEC and 34th EU PVSEC
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 7th IEEE World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, WCPEC 2018
Y2 - 10 June 2018 through 15 June 2018
ER -