Photovoltaic Module Reliability

1Introduction

Photovoltaics (PVs) is the direct conversion of light into electricity. Typically, this means generation of electricity from sunlight, a renewable energy process without release of pollution or greenhouse gases. PV is one of the renewable energy sources that offers the potential to replace burning of fossil fuels and, therefore, to slow the growing effects of global climate change.

When the author began working in PV at Solarex in 1976, the entire worldwide annual production of PV modules was less than 100 kW. Numerous groups [1, 2] are predicting that more than 100 GW of PV modules will be produced and shipped in 2019. That is a growth in production volume of more than six orders of magnitude across a span of little more than 40 years. PV has gone from a small niche business, providing electricity for remote power applications to a mainstream, electric power producing industry. It has been estimated that PV provided approximately 3% of the world's electricity in 2018. PV and wind have been the two fastest growing sectors in commercial electricity production in the world for a number of years [3].

So why has PV been so successful? Certainly, the fact that PV is a clean, non‐polluting source of electricity is very important. The fact that the prices for PV modules have fallen dramatically from more than $40 per peak watt in the 1970s to around $0.40 per peak watt today [4] has also certainly helped. Today's price level makes PV one of the lowest‐cost sources of ...