This course covers the following topics:

1. Why outdoor evaluation? Overview of the course, some PV basics

2. Measurement of global, direct and indirect radiation

3. Measurement of solar module power in the lab

4. Measurement of solar module power at site

5. Thermography (Principle, emission factor, Planck's law, bright and dark thermography, determination of the state of solar modules…)

6. Indoor Electroluminescence measurements (Principle of measurement, Examples of EL-photos, low-cost-EL, time-efficient setup for low-cost-EL)

7. Outdoor Electroluminescence measurements (Principle of measurement, Examples of EL-photos, low-cost-outdoor-EL, time-efficient setup for low cost-EL, PID-detection)

8. String-dark-iv-technology (Motivation, measurement method, detection of PID, detection of defect bypass-diodes, detection of defect strings)

9. Dark2Bright-technology (Motivation, principle, advantages and limitations of the method, analytical approach, AI-approach)

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Learning Objectives:

- Know, which measuring method is the suitable one to check solar modules and whole plants.

- Explain, how techniques like thermography and electroluminescence can be used to detect failures in modules and plants.

- Understand, how even low-cost-outdoor-EL-techniques can be valuable methods to analyse module failures in detail.

- Describe, how the Dark-IV-Characteristic-Curve-Method accelerates and simplifies the failures examination of PV-strings.

- Students should have an overview and an insight to PV-quality measurement techniques and are able to choose the appropriate method.