Publications Details

Geographic Assessment of Photovoltaic Module Environmental Degradation Stressors

Jones, Christian B.; Karin, Todd; Jain, Anubhav; Hobbs, William B.; Libby, Cara

Environmental stress can degrade photovoltiac (PV) modules. We perform a literature search to identify models that estimate the damage caused by exposure to various environmental stressors, including temperature, radiation, and humidity. The weather-related variables, including ambient temperature, irradiance and humidity are calculated using the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS). The analysis also calculated degradation-model stressors, module temperature, plane of array irradiance, and relative humidity and compared these PV-specific variables to identify correlations and the translation required to represent the stressor accurately. The results show that global horizontal (GHI) irradiance can be used instead of plane-of-array irradiance to represent radiation dose. However, module temperature can be significantly different from ambient temperatures and specific humidity is significantly different from relative humidity.