The Effect of Average Photon Energy and Module Temperature on Performance of Photovoltaic Module under Thailand's Climate Condition

This article present the effect of average photon energy and module temperature on performance of amorphous silicon (a-Si), polycrystalline (p-Si) and hetero-junction intrinsic thin layer (HIT) photovoltaic (PV) modules under Thailand climatic condition which located at the equator zone. The outdoor solar irradiance distribution measurements on the PV array installed at Energy Park, School of Renewable Energy Technology (SERT), Naresuan University, Thailand revealed that the field output factor of the poly-Si and HIT PV modules depended almost only on a module temperature, while that of the a-Si ones mainly depended on APE. The behaviors were reasonable considering from the operating mechanisms of the PV modules. These results demonstrate that APE is a reasonable and useful index to describe the spectral irradiance distribution for evaluating the performance of PV modules.