Togo solar broken glass

Why is glass breakage a problem in solar power plants?

Modern PV modules often use thinner glass to reduce weight and material costs which lead to glass breakage. Glass breakage is a growing concern for the solar power plant operators.

Are solar modules Breaking Glass?

Solar modules are getting bigger, thinner, and more powerful. But from Texas to Thailand, the same problem is appearing: broken glass. Not from hail or mishandling, but from cracks that spider from frame edges, splinter near clamps, and web across modules.

How common is glass breakage in PV modules?

A customer complaints research, on PV modules after two years of operation, observed glass breakage for 10% of the failure cases [ 28 ]. Another study on PV failures observed an even higher failure-share for glass breakage.

Are glass-glass PV modules a problem?

Unfortunately, glass-glass PV modules are, similar to regular PV modules, subject to early life failures. A failure of growing concern are defects in the glass layer (s) of PV modules. The scale of decommissioned PV modules with glass defects will increase with the development of solar PV energy [ 7 ].