Climate- and Technology-Dependent Performance Loss Rates in a Large Commercial Photovoltaic Monitoring Dataset

Abstract

Detailed knowledge of the performance of photovoltaic (PV) systems over their full lifetime is invaluable for evaluating their profitability and sustainability. PV systems are known to have gradually declining performance; for long-term yield assessments, typically a performance loss rate (PLR) of −0.5% yr−1 is assumed. Herein, monitoring data of thousands of commercial PV systems is evaluated to determine how performance loss trends and PLR values are affected by operational climate, PV module technology, and other parameters. Using performance ratio (PR) measurements from almost 6000 PV systems, the long-term trends in PR and overall PLR value are evaluated. Subsequently, the relation between climate, performance loss, and PLR for three different climate classification schemes is evaluated. Finally, how long-term performance loss trends and estimated PLR values differ for PV module technology and other parameters are evaluated. The results show that in general, PV systems that have operated now for at least 3 but up to 25 years show a PLR of roughly −1% yr−1, indicating substantially higher performance loss compared to typical estimates used for new PV systems. Climate by itself does not seem to be the leading factor that determines overall performance loss trends or PLR values in the dataset analyzed.