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Annual degradation rates and soiling losses of photovoltaic systems composed of recent crystalline silicon technologies in Japan
  • Tetsuyuki Ishii
Tetsuyuki Ishii
Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry

Corresponding Author:tetsu@criepi.denken.or.jp

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Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the annual degradation rates of photovoltaic (PV) systems composed of PV modules based on recent crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV technologies. We investigated the annual degradation rates of four PV systems composed of different c-Si PV technologies. Furthermore, the effects of soiling on the annual degradation rates of these PV systems were examined. The results obtained indicate that the apparent annual degradation rates of the PV strings before surface cleaning were 0.8, 1.6, 1.4, and 1.2%/year, respectively, because of optical losses due to dust particles, although the surfaces of the PV arrays had been washed by plentiful rainfall under subtropical climatic conditions. However, the inherent annual degradation rates of the PV strings after surface cleaning were 0.1, 0.6, 0.0, and 0.3%/year, respectively. These low degradation rates indicate that the PV systems composed of the recent c-Si PV technologies all offered quite stable performance.