The Four Causes of Solar Module Microcracks: Microcracks Video Series Part 2
There are four main causes of solar module microcracks. In Part 2 of our series, CEA's Paul Wormser describes where and how microcracks are formed during and after manufacturing.
Video Transcript:
Microcracks can come from several different areas over the lifecycle of a photovoltaic module.
During manufacturing, certainly either the manufacturing of the wafer or the cell or the module. And that's probably where the majority of microcracks are born - during the part of the process where cells are soldered one to the next to the next, or what we call interconnection.
Beyond that, microcracks can also happen during shipment. And you can imagine putting solar modules in boxes or on pallets and shipping them from one part of the world all the way to another part of the world. And if they're not handled well, or the packaging's not built in the right way, you could imagine some damage happening during shipment.
You can also imagine some damage happening during installation. And unfortunately, we've seen photos and we've seen people, sort of rough handling modules. We've even seen people stand on modules in some cases. And that's absolutely to be avoided because that can cause cracks, small ones, medium ones, big ones.
And then during operation, we've also seen cracks conform from stresses on modules, whether it's heavy wind load, or heavy snow load, or even something as inconvenient as somebody cutting the grass around solar modules and they hit a rock and a rock bounces up and hits the bottom of the module. So cracks can form in all four stages, manufacturing, shipment, installation, and overall ownership.
View Part 3, Why It's Important to Detect Solar Module Microcracks here.