Incidence Angle Effect: Validation of New Measurement Methods for IEC 61853-2

Abstract

The incidence angle effect causes a decrease in the photogenerated current of PV modules when they are subject to incident irradiance at wide angles: Its relevance should be quantified for accurate energy yield purposes and has recently gained significance due to the rising interest in novel integrated PV applications, where vertical or nonoptimal tilt are favored (e.g., in urban structures, in agrivoltaics, and vehicles). The international standard IEC 61853-2 presents both outdoor and indoor measurement methods: However, the indoor measurement method for commercial-size modules is often impractical due to irradiance uniformity limitations on the volume spanned by the tested module upon rotation in most of the solar simulators available on the market. In recent years, new solutions have been proposed to overcome these limitations and allow wider adoption of this standard: However, method validations and interlaboratory comparisons have been conducted so far only on small-area samples, and a real validation on commercial-size modules is still missing. In this work, we aim at filling this gap, reporting the results of an interlaboratory comparison conducted within the international project team that is currently working at the new edition of IEC 61853-2. The results show a remarkable agreement between different measurement methods, thus validating more options for the evaluation of this important effect.