Spire, a US based company providing capital equipment and turnkey production lines to manufacture photovoltaic (PV) modules, has unveiled a 6mt by 1.3mt SPI-Sun simulator 6013SLP (6013) with the first unit to be delivered to SoloPower located in San Jose, California, for application to copper-indium-gallium-selenide modules.
The simulator is based on Spire’s single long pulse (SLP) series. Top module qualifying and testing agencies such as UL, TUV, FSEC and the national laboratories in the US, India, Italy and Korea use them.
The company said that the 6013 was designed for modules up to 6mt in length and 1.3mt wide, its solar spectrum is class A, and intensity uniformity is +- 2%. It has an adjustable pulse length from 20 to 80 milliseconds and also has an adjustable intensity range from 200-1100W/m2.
Roger Little, chairman and CEO of Spire, said: “Some thin film module designs are becoming very long compared to their width, for incorporation into roofing materials. These are very different from traditional crystalline modules. Spire has created the SLP series of simulators to handle a wide variety of module shapes and sizes.”