Unisolar Roofing [RE-wrenches]

Eric Smiley Eric_Smiley at bcit.ca
Thu Mar 15 12:40:53 PST 2001


Regarding 3rd party testing. Photon International (a rather expensive
European PV industry magazine) has an article in their November 2000
issue on PV Module performance.

I'll summarize the article:

The Netherlands Energy Research Foundation (ECN) tested nine modules:
BPSolar BP585 and MST 43, Kyocera KC60, Siemens S30 and SM-55, UniSolar
US-32, ASE-100, Free Energy Europe A13P and Shell RSM75.

The upshot of the testing:
Te US-32 outperformed the other modules in terms of kWh produced per kW
installed, under the relatively low-light conditions prevalent in the
Netherlands.

The explanation from ECN? Better efficiency at low irradiance, and a
better temperature coefficient. The US-32 had an efficiency of about 6%
at 1000 W/m^2, and 7.5% at 200 W/m^2.

Example: Annual DC yield of 1164 kWh/kW for the US-32 versus 977 kWh/kW
for the BP585.

One caveat, (there's the word-of-the-day) the results were based on a
combination of real world testing and computer simulation. I'm waiting
for more real world tests before I hop on the bandwagon.

The study results "Characterisation of PV modules new generations.
Results of tests and simulations" are available from:


http://www.ecn.nl/library/reports/2000/c00067.html



>Also don't believe the garbage you read from manufacturers that a-Si
does
>better in cloudy areas and in different parts of the country. It is
true
>that every module has a different spectral response, but those are not
>enough to make a big difference from climate to climate. They were
making
>those same claims 10 years ago when we were testing their tandum
junction
>products. We found that those products performed worse than any other
>product in low light levels. That didn't stop the claims however.

>Remember, without true 3rd party information on modules and inverters,
you
>should take any manufacturers information as marketing materials and
not
>fact.



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Smiley
Project Leader - BCIT Technology Centre
Photovoltaic Energy Applied Research Lab (PEARL) - BCIT
ph: (604)432-8657 www.bcit.ca/~tc/pearl/index.htm

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