Outdoor Module and System Testing Services
As part of the “TruePowerTM Alliance”, which was initiated and is driven by SERIS, the institute operates high-precision outdoor testing facilities for PV modules and systems in different climate zones. For energy yield assessments, and eventually investment decisions, knowledge of the actual generated energy per year rather than the rated peak power under standard test conditions (STC) in the laboratory is much more relevant. However, the actual energy output depends strongly on the geographic location of the system. Therefore, SERIS has implemented outdoor testing facilities on both module and system level in the three most important climate zones: temperate (Germany, China), tropical (Singapore) and desert (Australia). Some of the world’s leading PV manufacturers are collaborating with SERIS and are field-testing their modules within the TruePowerTM Alliance.
SERIS applies its self-developed data acquisition system at the TruePowerTM sites. To date, through many years of working with clients and carrying out R&D projects, SERIS has achieved outstanding data acquisition rates of more than 99% per year, proving the robustness and reliability of its equipment.
Before being installed at any of SERIS' Outdoor Module and System Testing facilities, each PV module undergoes power measurement at STC in SERIS’ certified PV Module Testing laboratory, pre-conditioning for 5 days (outdoor exposure) for silicon wafer-based technologies (or as per manufacturer’s recommendation for the various thin-film technologies), followed by a second power measurement in the laboratory at STC. This procedure not only determines the initial degradation and/or stable power generation, but also leads to a reliable "actual" wattage of the module, which is then used as the "baseline" (rather than the "nominal" name plate value) for any energy yield data that relate to the installed PV capacity.
The various PV module and system data (which are available in time intervals as short as 1 minute) include:
- Module temperature
- DC characteristics: Voc, Vmpp, Isc, Impp, Pmpp, I-V Curve
- AC characteristics: voltage, current, active and reactive power, etc.
- Cumulative energy yield (DC and AC side)
In addition, every TruePowerTM site has a state-of-the-art meteorological station, using the following equipment:
- Pyranometer (horizontal and in-plane)
- Silicon sensor (horizontal and in-plane)
- Pyrheliometer
- Spectro-radiometer
- UV radiometer
- Ambient temperature
- Other meteorological sensors (wind speed & direction, humidity, rainfall)
For the case of the Outdoor Module Testing (OMT) facility in Singapore, customers can also select to get access to additional benchmark comparisons of up to seven different commercially available PV module technologies (several thin-film technologies and several types of silicon wafer based technologies).
