Objectives

The overall goal of this project is to provide the necessary metrological infrastructure, techniques and guidance to accelerate time-to-market for emerging photovoltaic (PV) technologies, which have the potential to significantly reduce the cost of photovoltaic energy, the most important future energy source.

The project focuses on the traceable measurement and characterisation of emerging PV applications.

The specific objectives are:

  1. To validate the suitability and reduce the uncertainty, associated with measuring the nominal power of PV devices, within the calibration chain according to the IEC 60904 standard series. This should include multi-junction PV devices and devices constructed from perovskite materials.
  2. To determine the uncertainty sources related to the output power of PV modules. This should include development of models to quantify the uncertainty sources that are associated with measurement of the I-V curve in accordance with IEC 60904-1 and spectral irradiance and spectral response of PV devices in accordance with IEC 60904-8.
  3. To define a quality metric for the behaviour of PV modules in shady locations such as urban areas in order to quantify the benefits of shade-tolerant module designs.
  4. To prepare a classification of PV-based energy-harvesting devices for the Internet of Things (IoT) applications, by developing and validating traceable methods for evaluating their performance in low light (indoor) conditions and their sensitivity to influencing factors e.g. the pulse-width modulation of modern efficient light sources.
  5. To facilitate the take up of the technology and measurement infrastructure developed in the project by the measurement supply chain (accredited laboratories, instrumentation manufacturers), standards developing organisations (IEC, especially IEC TC82 and IEC TC113) and end users (e.g. photovoltaics industry). In addition, to contribute to revision of the IEC 60904 standard series.