Impact of Climate Change on Photovoltaic Performance: Case Study in French Cities

Abstract

With the photovoltaic (PV) market significantly growing thanks to the support of environmental incentives, it is essential to address the influence of climate change on PV performances. In the literature, several methodologies have been suggested to measure the effect of climate change through module temperature losses and natural degradation rates, but no work has been found to combine both of them. This article tackles this issue through a numerical approach in order to quantify to which extent climate change impacts the performance of a PV installation over its lifetime. The methodology has been applied in different French cities where climate change is found to have a moderate effect on the performance ratio.