Industry Facing PV Degradation Prediction Tool and Degradation Database to Enable a 50-Year-Life Module

DuraMAT will create a comprehensive software framework for analyzing photovoltaic (PV) degradation on a mode or mechanism level for achieving 50-year-life modules.

The software framework will rely on open-source, object-oriented programming, made accessible through the use of Jupyter Journals loaded through Binder, with widgets for user interaction and dashboard capabilities (e.g., voilá) to hide the programmatic aspect on the visual design. There will be separate calculators for each degradation process.

We envision users (from DuraMAT, industry, academia, etc.) being able to search for a combination of keywords related to the material(s) they want to evaluate and find data regarding the thermal acceleration factors, hydrolytic acceleration factors, UV, etc., with respective references. Then our online tool will provide the means to extrapolate to the field to visualize the relevance of various parameters on performance. It is not the intent to do a complete service-life prediction of a module but to assess degradation on a mode by-mode basis. By evaluating all the modes independently, we can identify the weakest links and target those to achieve the 50-year modules.