Boston, MA 10/22/2013 (wallstreetpr) – SunPower Corporation (NASDAQ:SPWR), a leading energy services and solar technology company, announced recently that its SunPower® E20/327 Solar Panel of high efficiency recently went through stringent third-party testing for PID (potential induced degradation) by PV Evolution Labs. The panels showed a power loss of less than 0.2% upon completion and performed better than any of the other solar panels that were tested. The average degradation of modules that passed this test is around 4 to 5%.
PID is a phenomenon in which leakage of electrical current to the panel frame from the solar cell drives ion migration that modifies the electrical features of the solar cell and degrades the power output of the panel. This process is accelerated by humidity, temperature, and voltage.
Certificates are earned by the company in all grounding configurations and when it was compared with conventional panels that passed, it panels were showed to be degraded at rate of 20 times lower. Only 50% of all panels that were tested successfully passed the criteria of the program. A conventional panel is about 240 watts, 1.6 square meters in size, and 15% efficient.
The president and the Chief Executive Officer of the company, Tom Werner, said that the third-party testing program confirmed that solar panels of SunPower, in any grounding configuration, are virtually PID free and offer extreme resistance to degradation and provides results that surpasses the nearest conventional panel. He further added that they are committed to providing third-party validation to their customers as a solar technology leader, and they will assure their customers that they are buying are the most reliable panels on the market.
PV Evolution Labs developed testing criterion that include subjecting the solar panels to maximum-rated voltage stress and 600 hours of damp heat conditioning which is defined in international testing standards. A panel must demonstrate less than 5% power loss after 100 hours of testing and less than 10% after 600 hours of testing in order to pass the test.
