Statistical Visualization of Photovoltaic Quality Measurements

The project (Nov 2008 - Dec 2008) is supported by TÜV Rheinland Immissionsschutz und Energiesysteme GmbH.

An important problem in photovoltaics is the statistical quality control of the power output of photovoltaic (PV) modules under standard conditions. Typically, the observations are non-normal, and in practice the visual evaluation of formal statistics and decision functions by means of appropriate graphics is necessary to validate the results. Relevant visualizations, e.g., nonparametric density estimates, depend on control parameters, which can be chosen manually by the user or determined according to mathematical optimality criteria. Careful experiments allow quality engineers to gain valuable insight into the distributional structure of the relevant data.

The project aims to design and implement appropriate problem-specific and customized nonparametric distributional estimators and corresponding visualizations. Furthermore, an intelligent adaptive statistical graphical user interface will be developed which integrates statistical algorithms and user interaction.

These features are implemented in our software APOS photovoltaic StatLab (Assessing the Power Output Specifications of PV modules), a tool for photovoltaic laboratories and the photovoltaic industry providing statistical support for the certification and quality evaluation of PV modules. It implements a multi-stage decision process which leads to substantially reduced sample sizes in many cases, thus reducing the costs substantially.

APOS photovoltaic StatLab is licensed by leading European and US-american photovoltaic laboratories and manufacturers. Please contact us.

A research version supports computers with multi-core processors by employing parallelized statistical algorithms. That provides better functionality and performance to analyze very large data sets. The programme runs on all major platforms. 

Screenshots: Windows XP (production version), Mac OS X (research version), OpenSolaris (production version)