Potential-induced degradation test on CIGS photovoltaic modules

Copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells are one of the most promising candidates for high efficiency thin-film solar cells. Recently, with the increase of system voltage of field array, the long term reliability became affected by the high potential bias. In this paper, we focus on the effect of potential induced degradation (PID) of CIGS photovoltaic modules, it consists of a climatic chamber that allows us to perform the PID test by applying a negative voltage (-1000 V), the illuminated current-voltage (I-V) characteristics were acquired in order to determine the extent in which the modules performances are affected by high voltage. Obtained results show that CIGS modules suffer from PID, manifested mainly in the maximum power (P
_max
) and fill factor (FF). We perform a recovery test for degraded modules, by applying a positive voltage (+1000 V); it was observed that modules recover a part of their original performances.