In-situ monitoring of the accelerated performance degradation of thin film solar cells

A ‘hybrid’ degradation setup, which allows the use of humidity, temperature and illumination as loads in order to accelerate degradation of solar cells and modules, has been designed and constructed. In this setup, the current voltage output of photovoltaic samples is automatically logged and the electrical parameters are calculated. This allows the study of the impact of illumination and damp heat induced degradation by in-situ monitoring. Additionally, this setup also allows the determination of temperature dependency of solar cells by a simple procedure.