Lars Podlowski, Solyco: Reliability Testing of Various Commercial TOPCon PV Modules

Описание: Lars Podlowski, Board Member, Solyco Solar AG, in his keynote speech, spoke about the reliability testing of various commercial TOPCon PV modules. Reflecting on concerns about reliability of TOPCon solar modules vis-à-vis the industry workhorse PERC, Podlowski shared results of reliability tests, mainly damp heat (DH) on dual-glass and glass-backsheet versions.

While dual-glass TOPCon modules are at par with PERC, glass-backsheet modules show a huge variation in product quality regarding DH stability. With further investigation of individual parameters revealed that the power degradation is mainly due to the losses in fill factor, which can be routed to increase in series resistance, meaning the moisture ingression corroding the aluminum-silver contacts on front side, with no dip in Voc, indicate that the passivation stack is intact. Having said that, Podlowski emphasized that not every glass-backsheet module failed, implying TOPCon as a technology still compatible with the glass-backsheet configuration; however, special care needs to be taken when selecting the BOM.

He mainly considered tunneling oxide, polysilicon application and subsequent doping providing a deep analysis of available approaches – thermal oxidation, PECVD, ALD and wet-oxide – for tunneling oxide and LPCVD, PECVD, APCVD and PVD for postdeposition along with the doping option of in-situ and ex-situ.

The Conference took place on 26 October 2023 and had key stakeholders active in the various parts of module manufacturing discuss the topic “reliability” to facilitate designing and building high-performance modules that can last for decades.