In the research of next-generation photovoltaic devices, laboratory testing is usually conducted under stable and well-controlled conditions. However, when solar cells are deployed in real outdoor environments, irradiance intensity, spectral distribution, and ambient temperature continuously change over time, leading to much more complex and dynamic performance behavior.
How to obtain long-term, continuous operational data of solar cells under real natural conditions, and accurately understand the impact of environmental variations on device performance, has become an unavoidable challenge in outdoor evaluation. Against this backdrop, systematic long-term monitoring under real outdoor conditions has gradually emerged as a crucial bridge between laboratory testing and practical applications.
To address this need, Perfectlight Technology has developed an indoor–outdoor universal solar cell comprehensive testing system specifically for scientific research applications, supporting long-term operation testing and data acquisition under real environmental conditions.
I–V Scanning + MPPT Control + Capture of “Transient” Variations
The solar cell comprehensive testing system is not a simple voltage and current logging device. Each test channel integrates an independent electronic measurement unit and high-precision data acquisition module, supporting multiple electrical operating modes and enabling researchers to capture subtle device behavior under complex environmental conditions.
The system supports multi-channel parallel operation and allows flexible “combined testing strategies” based on experimental needs:
• Periodic I–V Curve Scanning
The solar cell comprehensive testing system can perform complete I–V curve measurements at user-defined intervals (e.g., every 10 minutes).
This not only records key parameters such as Voc, Isc, and FF, but also reveals the evolution of internal physical mechanisms under specific illumination or temperature conditions through changes in the I–V curve shape.
• Real-Time MPPT Operation Monitoring
The solar cell comprehensive testing system supports maximum power point tracking (MPPT) mode, ensuring that the solar cell always operates at its optimal working point.
Especially under cloudy conditions or rapidly fluctuating irradiance, the system can faithfully record the device’s response speed and recovery behavior to light intensity changes—critical dynamic information that static measurements cannot provide.
Users can even configure a hybrid mode of “continuous MPPT monitoring during daytime + scheduled I–V scans,” enabling simultaneous acquisition of cumulative energy yield data and key characteristic curves.
Providing a “Panoramic” Basis for Performance Analysis under Complex Conditions
Under outdoor conditions, performance variations of solar cells are often the result of multiple coupled factors. For example, is efficiency degradation caused by intrinsic material aging, or by reversible thermal losses at elevated temperatures? Is humidity the dominant factor, or is spectral mismatch responsible? Without precise synchronization between electrical and environmental data, these questions cannot be conclusively answered.
The solar cell comprehensive testing system adopts an integrated synchronous acquisition architecture, locking in environmental parameters at the exact millisecond when electrical data are recorded:
Real-time irradiance (W/m²)
Solar spectral distribution (340 nm – 1020 nm)
Cell or module temperature
Ambient temperature and humidity, wind speed and direction, and other meteorological data
This “panoramic” data recording approach completely eliminates time misalignment errors between different instruments, providing a solid foundation for multi-parameter correlation analysis (e.g., temperature coefficient calculations and spectral response analysis), and significantly enhancing the scientific credibility of the data.
