Tier 1 PV module manufacturer Vikram Solar, recently announced that their 60- and 72-cell multi-crystalline silicon solar photovoltaic modules belonging to ELDORA Prime, Ultima, Neo, Grand & Grand Ultima Series will be offered with a Linear Power Warranty upto 27 years across the globe.The warranted power degradation will be 2.5% in the 1st year, about 0.67% year-on-year from 2nd year till 27th year, finally ending with 80.1% of the original power measured under STC conditions,at the end of the 27th year.VikramSolar hasrun extended in-house reliability testprograms on all the above-mentioned types of modules for the past one year and collected data on failure mechanisms and substantiated them with established reliability modelsbefore they decided to go ahead and announce these “industry leading warranty terms”.
Mr. Ivan Saha, President & Chief Technology Officer, Vikram Solar commented on the achievement:”We stand by our commitment to global markets and constantly challenge ourselves to deliver lowest cost of ownership to our global customers. By validating these differentiated and best-in-class warranty terms, our Research &Development team has helped us to position our modules as the natural choice for long- term investments.Validation of module degradation is a complex process and is dependent on a number of variables like materials and process conditions used for manufacturing, weather conditions across various geographies, impact of long term degradation effects like UV, humidity and temperature, etc.”
The Research and Development team at Vikram Solar followed a well-structured process starting with detailed Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) for each stage of design, manufacturing and usage of materials, sub-components and processes. They followed it up with material level testing and life estimation, process modifications with ‘Design for Reliability’ concepts, outdoor testing of modules and finally long duration testing under ‘Highly Accelerated Stress Test’ (HAST) conditions. The results correlated field failure and lifetime test data in a ‘Unified Reliability Model’. It was also noted that under extreme field conditions, VikramSolar ELDORA multi-crystalline modules behaved much better than what others in the market offer recently.Vikram Solar is rolling out this warranty term for all the above product types manufactured and shipped as early as 1st December,2015.
