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News article10 June 2020

JRC study on printed organic photovoltaics (OPVs) technology makes headlines in the scientific community

Cover image published in Progress in PV magazine
© wileyonlinelibrary.com / wileyonlinelibrary.com

A new study on the thermal behaviour of large‐area OPV modules in real outdoor conditions features on the cover page of Progress in Photovoltaics, a prestigious scientific journal published by Wiley.

The analysis, carried out by the JRC’s European Solar Test Installation (ESTI) researchers, shows how exposure to real environmental conditions can affect OPV electrical performance, in particular due to temperature changes. At all irradiances, the power generated by the device increases until a certain temperature is reached and then decreases as the temperature continues to soar, an unusual characteristic that seems to be specific to OPV devices.

Typically, PV systems based on other PV technologies suffer from high temperatures. Indeed, most established PV technologies (c-Si above all) show a constant reduction of performance (power) as temperatures increase. At typical operating temperatures of 60 °C, c-Si PV panels performance can be reduced by up to 15% of the performance they achieve at 25 °C.

The analysis on irradiance and temperature dependences presented in this work suggests that OPV devices can work relatively more efficiently than other PV technologies under combined conditions of high irradiance and relatively high temperatures.

JRC scientists have recently published two papers on this topic and continue working on OPV to expand current knowledge and increase measurement reliability. This approach not only allows for a comparison between current and new technologies, but it is also pre-requisite for subsequent energy-rating and energy performance evaluation of each PV technology. Based on the power matrices measured in this work, subsequent energy-rating studies can simulate OPV performance at different locations and climate conditions, thus allowing a pre-normative comparison of the energy yield potential of these innovative new materials versus more mature technologies.

Related Content

Power matrix of OPV mini-module under steady conditions of temperature and irradiance at large-area solar simulator, Solar Energy 204 (2020) 542–551

Power performance and thermal operation of organic photovoltaic modules in real operating conditions, Prog Photovolt Res Appl. 2020;28:593–600

The cover image is based on the EU PVSEC Paper Power performance and thermal operation of organic photovoltaic modules in real operating conditions

Details

Publication date
10 June 2020