Development of repairing technique for interconnection of silicon photovoltaic modules using an induction heating system

Abstract

One of the origins for the degradations of the performance in Si photovoltaic (PV) modules is the corrosions of the front-side metallization, joints of solder and electrodes, solder and interconnection ribbons, thus increasing the series resistance after long-term exposure. This work proposes a reliable method to repair the failures of solder interconnections by utilizing the local induction heating system. The method will perform without removing the PV modules from the outdoor installation locations leading to time-saving and low maintenance costs. It reveals that the heating time on the failures of the solder joint and solder interconnection in the Si PV module plays a vital role in decreasing the series resistance and recovering the PV performance. The optimized heating conditions were a time of 2.0 s, a 10% output power of 3.5 kW, and a frequency of 900 kHz. The proposed method is effective and yields the recovery of the conversion efficiency of the Si solar cell module, as also confirmed by electroluminescence imaging.