The Influence of UV Light Exposure on the Reliability of Various Front Materials for Lightweight PV Module

Muhammad Aleem Zahid, Sungheon Kim, In-Sung Jung, Seong-Hwan Kang, Young-Hyun Cho, Eun-Chel Cho () and Junsin Yi ()
Additional contact information
Muhammad Aleem Zahid: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, Korea
Sungheon Kim: Interdisciplinary Program, Photovoltaic System Engineering Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, Korea
In-Sung Jung: New and Renewable Energy Material Development Center (NewREC), Chonbuk National University, Chonbuk 54896, Korea
Seong-Hwan Kang: New and Renewable Energy Material Development Center (NewREC), Chonbuk National University, Chonbuk 54896, Korea
Young-Hyun Cho: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, Korea
Eun-Chel Cho: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, Korea
Junsin Yi: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, Korea

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 19, 1-9

Abstract: The need for innovative design and materials is increasing for various types of photovoltaic (PV) installations in building integrated PV, agricultural, and floating systems. It is crucial to reduce the weight of the PV module to maximize its use in such applications. For this purpose, the front surface must be made of a polymer-based material instead of tempered glass. This study focuses on the analysis of the optical and ultraviolet (UV) reliability properties of various lightweight polymer front sheets. The results show that the transmittance and UV properties of the front material are good. Moreover, a PV module with a polymer front sheet rather than glass was constructed, and a characteristic investigation as well as UV reliability test were performed. The transmittance of the polycarbonate (PC) front sheet decreased by only <3% and the module fabricated with PC exhibited only an approximately 6% power drop after the UV reliability test; hence, the PC is suitable for use in the PV module industry.

Keywords: photovoltaics; polymer material; transmittance; ultraviolet test; stability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/19/6894/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/19/6894/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:19:p:6894-:d:920313

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().