First statistical evaluation of IR-inspections of PV-plants reveals that 86% of the installed PV-plants show IR-abnormalities. More than 120 PV-plants with more than 160,000 PV-modules were inspected and evaluated statistically. Main IR-abnormalities or failures in modules and string installations are analyzed, respectively. The average failure rate for PV-modules is about 8% and for module strings approximately 4%. The differentiation between the installation locations reveals that small residential installation show relatively more defective modules than large field installations. – Therefore, IR-imaging is a valuable method to give fast and reliable information about the actual quality and failure rate in inspected PV-installations.

Date Published: 26 September 2016
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 9938, Reliability of Photovoltaic Cells, Modules, Components, and Systems IX, 99380L (26 September 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2237821

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9938:
Reliability of Photovoltaic Cells, Modules, Components, and Systems IX
Neelkanth G. Dhere; John H. Wohlgemuth; Keiichiro Sakurai, Editor(s)