What Can Thermal Cycling Reveal About Solar Panel Quality?
Solar panels experience a range of temperature conditions and seasonal weather changes during their operational lifetime.
So we need a way to measure how well a solar panel can perform consistently at a high level across the full range of temperatures.
Thermal Cycling (TC) is the perfect way to put a solar panel through a wide temperature range to optimise product design, manufacturing and component selection.
Then design and production teams can work together to improve our solar panel reliability, so we only mass-produce solar panels that live up to the WINAICO quality.
WHAT IS THERMAL CYCLING (TC)?
As day and night cycles each day, and the weather changes throughout different seasons, Thermal Cycling works by putting solar panels through temperature extremes (-40°C to 85°C according to IEC standard) to simulate the impact of weather.
Solar panel components can expand and contract during Thermal Cycling, so weaknesses in laminate adhesion are tested, while poor soldering joints are also exposed.
According to IEC, the changes to the temperature should be less than 100°C/hour, and the minimum time at temperature extremes needs to be greater than 10 minutes per cycle. The maximum length of each temperature cycle is 6 hours.
While IEC 61215 standard requires 200 cycles of Thermal Cycling to test the reliability of solar panels, WINAICO’s reliability standards require 600 cycles, 3 times as long as IEC 61215, to make sure our solar panels can perform better and longer than the competitors.
To learn more about how WINAICO solar technologies can help with your rooftop energy production, please get in touch with us.
