Low Cost Electroluminescense Lab Implementation
Abstract
The electroluminescence (EL) test permits to obtain an image with active and inactive areas of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells. The occurrence of inactive areas is mainly caused by mechanical impact in PV module along its live steps; those areas cause efficiency and energy losses. This work presents the EL lab implementation with low-cost equipment such as a digital camera Sony cyber-shot DSC-WX9 specially adapted to get images of wave length near of PV cells emission and low-power voltage sources suitable configured to inject short current (Isc) values of PV modules. It was observed that, with this apparatus, the EL lab was properly implemented, and after some tests, the ISO 800 configuration of camera permits visually to detect inactive areas of cells in PV modules with values of injected electrical current less than 50 % of Isc. This fact results in an even higher cost reduction with equipment.