Kiwa PVEL Outdoor Testing

Outdoor Testing

PVUSA, the home of Kiwa PVEL’s grid-connected, research-grade outdoor testbed, is located in Davis, California. The storied facility is one of the first solar plants in North America. The field testbed represents California inland conditions, with a hot, dry summer season, and provides a range of testing options for comparing the performance of different products against competitive technologies and assessing real-world performance and operation. The grid-connected facility offers residential rooftops, fixed-tilt groundmounts and a variety of trackers, with high precision and high fidelity monitoring of electrical parameters and weather conditions.

Comparative Energy Yield Studies

Custom energy yield projects allow equipment manufacturers or project developers to assess different solar PV module and/or inverter manufacturers, technologies, product types and shading scenarios.

Product Development Testing

Evaluate early-stage technologies to obtain R&D insights that inform product design and commercialization.

Inverter and Energy Storage Runtime

Validate the reliable operation of energy storage products, inverters and other power electronics in the field for extended durations.

Product Safety Validation

Conduct field-representative arc and ground fault testing and evaluate rapid shutdown devices (RSDs) and other power electronics.

Model validation

Compare energy production in the field at PVUSA to performance models generated with Kiwa PVEL’s in-lab characterizations.

Other Outdoor Testing

Over the years Kiwa PVEL has performed a wide range of additional outdoor testing including racking installation time trials, bifacial energy yield analysis, tracker runtime projects, NOCT and operational temperature comparisons, and anti-soiling coating effectiveness studies.