Outdoor Testing

PVUSA, the home of Kiwa PVEL’s grid-connected, research-grade outdoor testbed, is located in Davis, California. The storied facility is one of the first solar plants in North America. The field testbed represents California inland conditions, with a hot, dry summer season, and provides a range of testing options for comparing the performance of different products against competitive technologies and assessing real-world performance and operation. The grid-connected facility offers residential rooftops, fixed-tilt groundmounts and a variety of trackers, with high precision and high fidelity monitoring of electrical parameters and weather conditions.

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Comparative Energy Yield Studies

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Custom energy yield projects allow equipment manufacturers or project developers to assess different solar PV module and/or inverter manufacturers, technologies, product types and shading scenarios.

Product Development Testing

Evaluate early-stage technologies to obtain R&D insights that inform product design and commercialization.

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Inverter and Energy Storage Runtime

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Validate the reliable operation of energy storage products, inverters and other power electronics in the field for extended durations.

Product Safety Validation

Conduct field-representative arc and ground fault testing and evaluate rapid shutdown devices (RSDs) and other power electronics.

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Model validation

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Compare energy production in the field at PVUSA to performance models generated with Kiwa PVEL’s in-lab characterizations.

Other Outdoor Testing

Over the years Kiwa PVEL has performed a wide range of additional outdoor testing including racking installation time trials, bifacial energy yield analysis, tracker runtime projects, NOCT and operational temperature comparisons, and anti-soiling coating effectiveness studies.

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