This work presents the results of a high-efficiency (HE) photovoltaic (PV) module roundrobin intercomparison between five Asian and European ISO/IEC 17025 accredited laboratories and one industrial laboratory based in Europe. The scope of the round-robin was to examine the measurements comparability for this PV technology with respect to ISO/IEC 17025 laboratory conformity assessment and also to examine the accuracy of step-like methods towards transient errors against already validated methods. The devices under test were four types of HE c-Si PV modules with efficiencies varying between 16.5% and 19.0%. The results indicate that a satisfactory agreement was achieved with maximum deviations of 1.59% in P max , 1.13% in I sc , and 0.64% in V oc for all devices under test. The weighted standard deviations in P max per device type, which can be seen as a conservative estimate of interlaboratory agreement for HE c-Si PV, ranged within 0.82% to 2.23% (k = 2). The accuracy of step-like methods towards transient errors was evaluated by comparing a second series of results at fixed I sc for each module under test, eliminating the influence of the effective irradiance measurement. This work suggests that the contribution of capacitive errors was in the range (0.47 ± 0.19) % (k = 2). A spectral mismatch sensitivity analysis showed that an accurate measurement of the spectral irradiance and of the involved spectral responsivities together with the punctual correction for the spectral mismatch can reduce the error in the measurement of PV modules performance of about 2% even in the case of c-Si against c-Si and class AAA solar simulators.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The Bureau International des Poids et Mesures has initiated world-wide intercomparisons of pressure standards. The intercomparison in the regime of very low pressures, i.e. 10-4 to 1 Pa, using Ar as the test gas, has now been completed with the participation of laboratories in nine countries (in alphabetical order): Czechoslovakia, Federal Republic of Germany, France, India, Italy, Japan, People's Republic of China, UK and United States of America. In addition, five of these laboratories made measurements using H2 as the test gas. Four spinning-rotor gauges were employed as transfer standards. The achieved transfer uncertainty between the pilot laboratory (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt) and a participating laboratory lies between 0.16% and 0.30% (1σ) for Ar and has allowed an intercomparison at this level of accuracy. At all investigated pressures the standards in the various laboratories lie within an interval of ±3% around the standard of the pilot laboratory. For a brief synopsis of the intercomparison results, the calibration data of each laboratory for one gas species are reduced to a single number, i.e., the average over the pressure range 10-3 to 1 Pa, although this procedure is somewhat arbitrary and obscures scatter and pressure-dependence of some calibration results. These averages deviate from their mean by not more than about 1%. Systematic deviations between some laboratories are clearly identifiable: however, for most of the laboratories it appears that these are compatible with the estimated uncertainties of the pressure generation and the transfer uncertainty.
An intercomparison of terrestrial photovoltaic (PV) calibrations was performed among a number of European calibration and testing laboratories that participated in the European Metrology Research Program (EMRP) project “PhotoClass”. The purpose of this intercomparison was to evaluate the comparability of calibration and testing services within the stated uncertainties of the individual laboratories. The calibration objects were two world photovoltaic scale (WPVS)-type reference solar cells, one made from crystalline silicon and one made from GaAs. The calibration value (CV) was the short-circuit current under standard test conditions (ISTC). In conclusion, it was found that the CVs are all consistent within the stated uncertainties. This result strengthens the reliance in the calibration chain and in the PV calibration infrastructure in Europe.
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