A new method to characterize c-Si PV cell and module

The photovoltaic (PV) industry is expanding rapidly to meet the growing renewable-energy demands globally. The failure-rate analysis indicated that a large portion of the accelerated PV module qualification failures was related to the failure of the cell itself, which was leading to the yield loss of cells during shipping. Therefore, damaged cell or module caused by shipping is always one of the serious problems to impact their long-term reliability in the field. This paper aims to propose a new test method to characterize c-Si PV cell and module, especially for the application scenarios occurred inside a factory (for process and handling cases) or from a factory to the other factory (for transportation case). Results not only document the best practices for reducing costs to benefit the end customers, but also are helpful to evaluate the performance of reliability for c-Si PV cell and module. Consequently, results have been applied to SEMI Doc. 5431 and passed as SEMI PV 56-1214 [1] successfully in December 2014.