Experimental study of the photoelectric performance and mismatch loss phenomenon of curved photovoltaic modules

Flexible photovoltaic technology not only has high power generation efficiency, but also is thin and light, which can be well adapted to the surface form of curved buildings. In this paper, the power output of different curved photovoltaic modules under outdoor dynamic conditions were investigated experimentally. Six same flexible CIGS modules were used to test all-day electrical power and temperature data in different bending forms, including length-oriented concave(lgcav) and convex(lgcvx) bending, width-oriented concave(wdcav) and convex(wdcvx) bending, length-oriented corrugated(lgcg) bending, and flat mounting. The experimental results showed that the circumferential irradiance distribution of the PV is seriously uneven in the curved types, and there are multiple peaks in the current-voltage curve of the modules. In one typical sunny day during the heating season in Hefei city of China, the experiment results showed that, the width-oriented forms showed the worst mismatch effect than the flat type, the concave bending forms showed more electrical loss than the convex bending forms. In the experiment day, the average power output of different bending forms decreased by 75.46% of width-oriented convex, 42.27% of length-oriented concave, 8.75% of length-oriented convex. The research can preference and data support for curved photovoltaic buildings.