Global photovoltaic industry losses of 4.6 billion US dollars! One of the main reasons for poor equipment performance
Source: mercomindia Release time: April 8, 2024 23:22:45 Author: Compiler | Xinrui
Research has shown that due to photovoltaic equipment failures and weather issues, the underperformance rate of the global photovoltaic industry has significantly increased, from 3.13% in 2022 to 4.47% in 2023. This resulted in a revenue loss of up to $4.6 billion (or $4696/MW) for the global photovoltaic industry in 2023.
According to the Global Photovoltaic Report recently released by Raptor Maps, the average revenue loss for large photovoltaic systems with an installed capacity of over 100MW is higher, at around $5000/MW per year.
Power losses pose significant challenges to the ambitious growth goals of the photovoltaic industry. For example, if this loss persists throughout the lifecycle of the photovoltaic system, the internal revenue of a 100MW photovoltaic project will decrease by more than 1.9% compared to the previous year.
The power loss of larger scale photovoltaic systems is usually higher than that of smaller scale photovoltaic systems. For example, the average power loss of photovoltaic systems between 100MW and 200MW is 4.75%, while the average power loss of photovoltaic systems above 200MW is 4.91%. The increase in power losses in large-scale photovoltaic systems has brought significant financial impacts, with annual power losses of $5000/MW for photovoltaic systems above 100MW, exceeding the global average of $4696/MW.
Although large-scale photovoltaic systems face higher power losses due to poor performance, the power losses of all photovoltaic systems have been increasing in the past five years. There are also obvious performance issues with installed capacity of 50MW or small photovoltaic systems, and by 2023, the power loss of all photovoltaic systems will exceed 4%.
In addition, over the past year, there has been a more significant increase in underperformance rates in larger scale photovoltaic systems, with underperformance rates for photovoltaic systems ranging from 100MW to 200MW and photovoltaic systems above 200MW increasing by 40% and 20% year-on-year, respectively.
Cause of malfunction
The report points out that system level failures are the main cause of increased losses in photovoltaic systems. Inverter failure, photovoltaic string interruption, and circuit breaker failure are the most significant, with power loss proportions of 1.91%, 0.90%, and 0.81%, respectively.
In addition, the failure rate of photovoltaic tracking brackets has increased from 0.26% in 2022 to 0.46% in 2023, indicating a wider range of challenges affecting the performance of photovoltaic systems.
During the inspection process, faults at the module or submodule level usually do not immediately result in power loss. However, module level issues may have more serious impacts, potentially affecting photovoltaic strings or inverter modules. With the intensification of climate change, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather phenomena are expected to increase, leading to more problems such as damage to photovoltaic panels or flooding of photovoltaic power plants. The power loss caused by weather events is about 1%, but in some cases, extreme weather conditions can lead to up to 60% of power loss.
Low operational efficiency (such as wasting time and inefficient resource allocation) is a common problem in photovoltaic systems of all scales. In the survey conducted by Raptor Maps in 2023, preventive maintenance visual inspection and verification of disturbance alarms were identified as important sources of time waste.