Photovoltaic Power Plant Aging

One of the most pressing problems nowadays is climate change and global warming. As it name indicates, it is a problem that concerns the whole earth. There is no doubt that the main cause for this to happen is human, and very related to non-renewable carbon-based energy resources. However, technology has evolved, and some alternatives have appeared in the energy conversion sector. Nevertheless, they are relatively young yet. Since the growth in renewable energies technologies wind power and PV are the ones that have taken the lead. Wind power is a relatively mature technology and even if it still has challenges to overcome the horizon is clear. However, in the PV case the technology is more recent. Even if it is true that PV modules have been used in space applications for more than 60 years, large scale production has not begun until last 10 years. This leaves the uncertainty of how will PV plants and modules age. The author will try to analyse the aging of a specific 63 kWp PV plant located in the roof of a building in Gävle, monitoring production and ambient condition data, to estimate the degradation and the new nominal power of the plant. It has been found out that the degradation of the system is not considerable. PV modules and solar inverters were studied, and even if there are more elements in the system, those are the principal ones. PV modules suffered a degradation of less than 5%, while solar inverters’ efficiency dropped from 95,4% to around 93%