During operation and maintenance of photovoltaic power plants, one important task is inspection of PV modules to detect a variety of issues that can affect their power production or safety. The most commonly used ones to inspect PV modules are visual and infrared inspection. These methods are quick and cheap to apply, but limited.

Daylight photoluminescence is a novel inspection method for large-scale photovoltaic module inspections, allowing much higher detail of the PV module's health status compared to common thermographic imaging. In the framework of H2020 project TRUST-PV, Eurac Research improved the method of daylight photoluminescence further for large scale PV inspections.

"In this work, the development of a new inverter to support daylight photoluminescence inspection is introduced, developed in collaboration by Huawei Germany. Eurac Research developed a method for automated operating point detection, and two approaches to measure the daylight photoluminescence signal and the possibilities of using these techniques for performance loss degradation analysis." says Lukas Koester, first author of the study.

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