Performance comparison of crystalline and thin film PV Technology: Observations at Utility scale Solar PV Plants under A high solar resource in western India

PV industry continues to search for opportunities to reduce the losses associated with site condition, designing and execution of the system. In this paper, the characteristics and behavior of fundamental parameters like Voltage, Current and Power for crystalline and thin film technologies are investigated under real different conditions of winter and summer seasons and compared with similar ideal system installed at Latitude: 23.15347; Longitude: 72.669309, to determine their comparative performance characteristics in real, outdoor conditions. We interpret our observations with practical analysis based on the results of the field measurement. Based on the research we can say that in winter condition the power output affects between 4 to 6 % in Poly crystalline based Solar PV system compare to thin film based system. Performance Ratio (PR) of REC make polycrystalline Si modules found to show 28% lower than ideal crystalline module and 32 % lower than Thin film Technology. This loss is due to Non Standard Degradation, PID effect, Snail trail, Micro-crack etc. for typical utility-scale projects in India. The thin film solar PV generates 5% higher energy compared to ideal crystalline system due to higher diffuse radiation in winter, and in summer, it can be affected less than 2% which has huge impact on annual power generation.