CEO Letter: Securing a Sustainable Future
Instability in supply chains, manufacturing locations, and commercial technologies can introduce deviations from quality that are only evident upon close inspection.
As RETC, part of the VDE Group, publishes its seventh annual PV Module Index Report, established solar photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturing landscapes and supply chains are shifting. The factors driving these changes present both tailwinds and headwinds that affect progress.
The tailwinds include exciting technological advancements and enlightened policy changes that generally advance climate risk mitigation goals, such as the rise of perovskite PV and regional efforts to reduce the solar industry’s carbon footprint. The headwinds include market disruptions and geopolitical tensions that seemingly undermine collective efforts to accelerate the global energy transition, such as the steep tariffs that are fanning the flames of a simmering trade war.
Instability in supply chains, manufacturing locations, and commercial technologies tends to introduce opportunities for deviation from quality. This tendency is not unique to this moment but rather walks hand in hand with periods of accelerated market disruption and change. Most importantly, this issue is evident only upon close inspection.
Based solely on product certification test results, today’s highly diversified solar manufacturing landscape is virtually indistinguishable from the more consolidated and stable pipelines of years past. Unfortunately, testing product samples to International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) qualification standards for terrestrial PV modules sheds little to no light on the ways in which commercial products tend to fail or wear out prematurely under real-world conditions of use.
Differences in performance and reliability only become apparent when we intentionally apply additional stresses with the goal of separating the wheat from the chaff. Subjecting today’s PV modules to RETC’s tried-and-true Thresher Test program—the industry’s first consensus reliability and durability test standard for PV modules—tells a different story.
In recent rounds of bankability testing, RETC has noted an increase in issues related to humidity, thermal cycling, potential-induced degradation, and metastability. This resurgence in PV cell-related issues, many of which we have not seen in our bankability testing for the better part of a decade, suggests that solar project stakeholders must remain vigilant about risks associated with shifting solar manufacturing supply chains.
We also continue to see the structural issues highlighted in last year’s report. Specifically, we have observed PV module frame and glass failures during mechanical loading, cyclical loading, and ballistic-impact testing that may be evidence of inadequate certification test standards. These laboratory-observed trends are disconcerting because they align with in-field failures reported by our operations and maintenance partners and project developer customers.
Though some recent bankability test results are alarming, these are also issues that the technical due diligence community has successfully eradicated in the past or can resolve with improved test standards. So long as we have eyes to see them, we can solve these problems.
Thank you for joining us as partners and collaborators in the collective effort to de-risk the critical energy infrastructure of the future, ensuring sustainable investment returns, insurable assets, and a worthwhile future.
