Standardize Test Method of Reliability Evaluation for c-Si Photovoltaic Product

Shipping damage is one of the key problems of photovoltaic (PV) failures in the field. In addition, the detailed documents and industry standards are necessary, to avoid cell breakages or cracks during transportation. Therefore, ITRI coordinated some TFs to set up a series of experiments on the performance evaluation for PV-cell and PV-module caused by transportation and shipping. This work aims to standardize the test method for performance criteria of PV-cell and PV-module for transportation, and evaluates a guideline and risk analysis for shipped package of PV product to meet the relevant reliability concerns in a long-term perspective. PV products are shipped not only in a fab by forklift trucks or handling, but also transported outside a fab by shipping vehicles such as truck, train, aircraft and shipboard. Consequently, results were applied to SEMI Doc. 5431 and released as SEMI PV56 [1] by voting in 2014. PV product’s makers and buyers, or any other party interested like package designers, can thus have a common testing standard to refer to when desired.