PV Module Reliability Experts Gather for DuraMAT Workshop
On May 22 and 23, 2017, the Bay Area Photovoltaic Consortium (BAPVC) and the Durable Module Materials (DuraMAT) Consortium convened a workshop at Stanford University. The workshop’s more than 90 participants included academic, government, and corporate partners of DuraMAT, as well as BAPVC members.
Participants presented talks and posters on module testing (both accelerated and in the field), module failure modes, lifetime predictions, module packaging materials, lifecycle analysis, solar data sharing, and opportunities in advanced data analytics. DuraMAT capability leaders each presented on their capability demonstration projects, including data infrastructure upgrades, thermal-electrical-mechanical modeling, applied materials discovery, combined accelerated stress testing, field deployment, and techno-economic analysis. Each presentation session was followed by a panel discussion.
“The workshop provided a great opportunity to identify future research needs for durable module packaging and multi-institutional collaboration opportunities,” said Teresa Barnes, Director of the DuraMAT Consortium. The consortium brings together the national lab and university research infrastructure with the photovoltaic and supply-chain industries to discover, develop, de-risk, and enable the commercialization of new materials and designs for photovoltaic modules—with the potential for a levelized cost of electricity of less than 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.