TY - JOUR A2 - Mantzavinos, Dionissios AU - Park, N. C. AU - Oh, W. W. AU - Kim, D. H. PY - 2013 DA - 2013/12/18 TI - Effect of Temperature and Humidity on the Degradation Rate of Multicrystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Module SP - 925280 VL - 2013 AB - In a PV module, the relative humidity (rh) of a front encapsulant is different from that of a backside encapsulant (rh_back). In this study, the effective humidity (rh_eff) in a PV module was investigated to study the effects of moisture variation on the degradation rate ( R D ). rh_effrepresents uniform humidity in a PV module when it is exposed to certain damp heat conditions. Five types of accelerated tests were conducted to derive the relation between rh_effand rh_back. rh_effshowed a linear relationship with rh_backat constant temperature. Two types of models, namely, Eyring and Peck models, were used for predicting the R D of PV modules, and their results were compared. The R D of PV modules was thermally activated at 0.49 eV. Furthermore, the temperature and rh_effhistory of PV modules over one year were determined at two locations: Miami (FL, USA) and Phoenix (AZ, USA). The accumulated R D values based on the temperature and rh_effof the modules were calculated by summing the hourly degradation amounts over the time history. SN - 1110-662X UR - https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/925280 DO - 10.1155/2013/925280 JF - International Journal of Photoenergy PB - Hindawi Publishing Corporation KW - ER -