Modeling Potential-Induced Degradation (PID) of Field-Exposed Crystalline Silicon Solar PV Modules: Focus on a Regeneration Term

Abstract

In this work, we further elaborate a model that was previously presented to simulate the effect of potential-induced degradation (PID) on the performance of field-exposed modules. We add to the predictive model a term aimed at describing the effect of regeneration during the night. We also investigate the impact of irradiance, temperature, bias, and load conditions on power regeneration. Laboratory PD-degraded mini-modules were subjected to indoor regeneration tests at different stress levels in order to model the contribution of each factor. This allows us to implement into our PID predictive model, besides a degradation term, a second term describing the regeneration. Finally, we apply this model with outdoor climatic data to obtain a more realistic simulation of the power evolution over time of PID-affected PV modules in different climatic conditions.