A Study of Open Circuit Voltage Production of Organic Photovoltaic Modules in the Outdoor Environment

Abstract

Organic photovoltaic modules printed by the roll to roll technology is the resulting product of the Feathery facades for positive energy buildings project. It is demanding for the product to be tested before it can be manufactured in large scale and widely applied. This thesis is part of the project approaching the design of an outdoor testing system for the organic photovoltaics panels. The environmental variables of interest are irradiance, temperature, and humidity. The thesis aims to determine the dependencies of the production of open circuit voltage on the environmental stress factor by implementing a test setup on four samples of organics photovoltaic panels.

The fundamental of organic photovoltaic cells and different testing techniques are briefly discussed in this thesis. The main focus is on illustrating the function of an outdoor testing system and the process of data analysis and interpretation. This thesis was written based upon the study of organic photovoltaics and the electrical component, in combination with the application of statistic, mathematics, and programming language.

The main finding determines a statistically significant effect of three dominant factors on open circuit voltage production of organic photovoltaics panels. In outdoor weathering condition, the dependency of open circuit voltage on surrounding factors is indicated to be similar to the previous research. However, it is ambiguous to give a conclusion in terms of how the impacts exerted on an individual device in the test.