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Reliability, Degradation and Performance Optimization in Photovoltaic Cells, Modules and Systems

A Special Issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073) belonging to the section "A2: Solar Energy and Photovoltaic Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 September 2026 | Viewed by 820

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Guest Editor
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto Per La Microelettronica E Microsistemi, 95121 Catania, Italy
Interests: photovoltaic engineering; photovoltaic modules; PV Panels; solar cell technology
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Photovoltaic solar technology has reached a high level of technological maturity and large-scale deployment, becoming one of the key pillars of the global energy transition. Nevertheless, several critical challenges remain unresolved, particularly concerning long-term degradation mechanisms, fault diagnosis, and the real operating behavior of photovoltaic cells, modules, and systems under diverse environmental and electrical conditions. Addressing these issues is essential to ensure reliability, efficiency, and sustainability over the entire lifetime of photovoltaic installations.

This Special Issue aims to collect recent advances that contribute to a deeper understanding of photovoltaic device physics, degradation phenomena, and failure mechanisms, as well as innovative methods for their early detection and mitigation. Contributions focusing on advanced photovoltaic cell technologies, novel module architectures, bifacial and multi-terminal configurations, and unconventional interconnection schemes are especially encouraged.

In addition, this Special Issue welcomes works related to power electronics for photovoltaic systems, including module- and sub-module-level optimization, DC/DC conversion, maximum power point tracking strategies, and advanced control and monitoring techniques. These approaches play a fundamental role in enhancing energy yield, improving mismatch tolerance, and increasing system robustness under partial shading, aging, and fault conditions.

Overall, the goal of this Special Issue is to provide a comprehensive overview of emerging technologies and methodologies that improve the performance, reliability, and sustainability of next-generation photovoltaic systems, bridging the gap between device-level innovation and system-level implementation.

Thank you in advance for your contributions.

Dr. Michel Piliougine
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • photovoltaic devices
  • solar cell technology
  • module-level power electronics
  • degradation and fault diagnosis
  • sustainable photovoltaic systems

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

28 pages, 5921 KB  
Article
Grid-Tied Photovoltaic Performance Analysis Under Mediterranean Operating Conditions: A Residual Performance Diagnostic Framework
by Athanasios Giannadakis, Konstantinos Naos, Alexandros Romeos and Giouli Mihalakakou
Energies 2026, 19(15), 3549; https://doi.org/10.3390/en19153549 - 28 Jul 2026
Viewed by 414
Abstract
Conventional photovoltaic performance indicators provide useful benchmarking but do not determine whether production deficits arise from expected weather and module effects or from unresolved plant-side behaviour. This study develops a residual performance diagnostic framework for data-limited grid-connected photovoltaic plants and applies it to [...] Read more.
Conventional photovoltaic performance indicators provide useful benchmarking but do not determine whether production deficits arise from expected weather and module effects or from unresolved plant-side behaviour. This study develops a residual performance diagnostic framework for data-limited grid-connected photovoltaic plants and applies it to two adjacent fixed-tilt crystalline-silicon systems, each rated at 99.36 kWp, in South Corfu, Greece, over 2016–2023. An expected-energy baseline was constructed using hourly irradiance and meteorological data from the Photovoltaic Geographical Information System after explicit correction for incidence-angle effects, irradiance-level response, module temperature, and first-order air-mass and spectral effects. Measured alternating-current energy delivered to the grid, obtained from the Hellenic Electricity Distribution Network Operator, was then compared with the corrected expected energy through a weather-adjusted system-efficiency indicator and its complementary residual-loss coefficient. The explicit module and weather loss envelope remained close to 9.01%, with temperature as the largest modelled component. Residual losses increased from 10.76% to 14.53% in Plant 1 and from 10.51% to 16.26% in Plant 2. The fitted apparent annual declines were 0.453 percentage points per year for Plant 1 and 0.609 percentage points per year for Plant 2. A generation-hour uncertainty analysis based on independent observations from the Hellenic National Meteorological Service gave expanded uncertainties of ±5.80% for expected energy and ±5.89% for the system-efficiency indicator. The framework is therefore presented as an uncertainty-bounded screening method for prioritizing inspection and maintenance, not as a root-cause diagnostic or a formal performance-loss-rate assessment. Full article
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