Experiments started in Chile in 2022 reveal that the heterojunction technology panels developed by 3SUN and the CEA significantly outperform some of the best PERC technologies.
After 30 months of operation in the desert, no signs of performance degradation were observed for any of the technologies tested.
In photovoltaics, as in many other sectors, there's nothing like long-term testing under real-life conditions to verify reliability. And for extreme, accelerated testing in terms of irradiation and UV radiation, what better place than the Atacama Desert to put photovoltaic panels to the test?
The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is one of the most arid regions on our planet, and an increasingly popular place to put different technologies on trial. Here, for the past two and a half years, 3SUN and the CEA have been carrying out a comparative study between 3SUN's heterojunction technology panels and three of the best mono-PERC technologies on the market, from the world's leading manufacturers in terms of production volume.
The experiment, carried out in partnership with AtamosTec in Chile, observes the behavior of four references of bifacial photovoltaic panels installed on an experimental platform, on fixed frames and on single-axis horizontal trackers.
On each support, the panels under test are assembled in a chain of eight, in series. They are surrounded by untested panels, to make the installation representative of a real configuration and avoid side effects.
The platform's instrumentation tracks :
- The temperature of one panel in each photovoltaic string,
- irradiance of the front and rear panels,
- Electrical output of each string.
After 30 months of measurements over the period June 2022 - December 2024, the results are consolidating and allow us to draw a number of conclusions.
Credits: CORFOTracking provides an average irradiance gain of 17.5% at the front.
This gain is optimal in summer, with high values that can exceed 30%, and minimal in winter, with very low or even negative values.
3SUN panels are warmer, but show around 30% less heat loss
On average, 3Sun panels are between 0.5 and 0.8°C warmer than the PERC references tested. Thanks to a better power-to-temperature ratio, thermal losses are around 30% lower than on other modules.
3SUN heterojunction panels produce more than the PERC references tested.
On both types of installation (fixed or 1-axis tracker), 3Sun modules outperform the other references tested, with additional production (kWh/kWp) of 3 to 6%, depending on reference and support.
After 30 months of operation in the desert, no signs of performance degradation have been observed for any of the technologies.
In addition, panel cleaning, introduced from mid-2023 onwards, makes it possible to estimate the impact of soiling on performance. The loss in production due to soiling is around 1% per month in average, on both types of structure and for all the systems tested.