Degradation rate analysis of offshore PV module applications considering climatic stresses and salinity effects

Increasing in population density has led to increased demand and competition for land space. Therefore, floating photovoltaic (FPV) systems have emerged to exploit water surfaces instead of relying on land space. FPV modules in marine settings lose their performance quickly because they are exposed to high relative humidity (RH), temperature differences, wind speed, salinity, and ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Thus, it has become necessary to take measures to facilitate the prediction of the life of PV modules to help investors and decision-makers adopt the construction of FPV stations. This paper presents physical degradation models based on atmospheric data inputs to compare the degradation rates of offshore PV modules with those on land. To analyze the impact of climate stresses on offshore PV modules, degradation models applied to land-based PV modules are used. Moreover, to improve the accuracy of the degradation rate, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is used to evaluate the parameters of degradation models. The results confirm the validity of the adopted models by reducing the error between the actual and predicted values ​​by ± 0.5 %. In addition, this study addresses the energy degradation rates due to the effect of salts and estimates the parameters that affect the service life expectations of PV modules. The results demonstrate that salt accumulation on offshore PV modules accelerates the degradation rate by 0.05 % and 0.13 % under salinity effect, thus reducing the lifetime of the modules from two to 3 to 5 years.