ASU-PRL has been working towards the goal of predicting the lifetime of a PV module for every climatic region and every type of module construction by investigating actual field failure modes and mechanisms, accelerated lifetime testing (ALT), physics-based statistical models.

In the past four years alone, ASU-PRL has published more than 40 papers in the peer-reviewed photovoltaic conferences and journals, and most of these papers are related to PV reliability and durability.  ASU-PRL has more than 20 years of track record to secure and successfully execute sponsored projects funded by DOE, NREL, Sandia, EPRI, electric utility companies and private companies. ASU-PRL has over 20 years of reliability testing expertise and capabilities to perform accelerated tests, to perform outdoor field tests, to characterize modules, cells and materials, and to develop stress and statistical models predicting lifetime of PV modules. 

Accelerated testing capabilities include: Three walk-in environmental chambers; one walk-in UV weathering chamber for UV weathering of commercial size PV modules; one small weathering chamber for UV weathering of coupons; two PID test setups; four ovens for static temperature stresses; one indoor soiling chamber. 

Outdoor testing capabilities include: Two 2-axis trackers; one 1-axis tracker; several fixed tilt racks; weather stations; three soiling stations; mock rooftop; several data acquisition systems with online monitoring capabilities; power quality analyzer; two multi-curve I-V tracers; three single-curve I-V tracers; AOI identifier; SunEye. 

Module characterization tools include: Cell QE at the module level for QE loss determination after repeated accelerated/field stresses; electroluminescence; infrared; handheld reflectance/transmittance spectrometer (350-2500 nm); handheld FTIR for indoor and outdoor; dark I-V; module laminator; semi-automated cell tabber and stringer; dryhipot and wet-resistance testers. Cell characterization tools include: Indoor solar simulator for dark and light I-V; cell QE; four-probe resistance tester; cell component extraction (mechanical and chemical). 

Materials characterization tools include: Differential scanning calorimeter (DSC); thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA); water vapor transmission rate (WVTR); universal mechanical/peel tester; thermal conductivity tester for polymeric materials/sheets. 

Modeling - Stress, statistical and image processing models/tools development includes: full suite of ReliaSoft software; Minitab, Tableau, SAS, JMP, MATLAB and OriginPro.

A few of ASU-PRL capabilities are listed below;