An official website of the European Union How do you know?      
European Commission logo
JRC Publications Repository Menu

Linearity of photovoltaic devices: quantitative assessment with N-lamp method

cover
The short-circuit current output of photovoltaic (PV) reference device is typically used to determine the incident irradiance of natural or simulated sunlight. Normally the PV reference device is calibrated at standard test conditions and other irradiances are calculated based on a proportionality assumption (termed linearity) between short-circuit current output and incident irradiance. Here the linearity of PV devices is newly defined including a quantitative correction for non-linearity (NL) when measuring incident irradiance. Linearity can be determined experimentally by the flux addition principle such as in the two-lamp method. The latter provides information about linearity between two irradiance levels which differ by a factor of two, but no information on linearity inside this interval. Here this concept is extended to the N-lamp method. It is shown that this provides more detailed linearity information with low uncertainty. Measurements were made with an 11-lamp steady-state solar simulator and showed a NL deviation of 2% in the irradiance range from 100 W m−2 to 1100 W m−2 for the PV reference cell tested. The method is easily implemented, provides detailed quantitative linearity assessment at low cost and can be considered a primary method for linearity assessment, as it does not require any reference device.
2019-05-27
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
JRC113925
0957-0233 (online),   
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC113925,   
10.1088/1361-6501/ab1231 (online),   
Language Citation
NameCountryCityType
Datasets
IDTitlePublic URL
Dataset collections
IDAcronymTitlePublic URL
Scripts / source codes
DescriptionPublic URL
Additional supporting files
File nameDescriptionFile type 
Show metadata record  Copy citation url to clipboard  Download BibTeX
Items published in the JRC Publications Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. Additional information: https://ec.europa.eu/info/legal-notice_en#copyright-notice