Kingston Photovoltaic Broken Glass

Glass breakage is a growing concern for the solar power plant operators. With the trend towards double glass sided modules as seen in Bifacials, or TOPCon with double glass sided construction, the changes in solar PV module design and materials mean breakages are now a bigger risk than ever.

Studies have found that contact between glass and frames is linked to spontaneous breakage in some PV modules. A recommended solution is using rubbery silicone spacers which maintain separation between the glass and the frame. Many modules already use silicone gaskets, but some designs leave gaps where the glass directly touches the metal frame.

The glass breakages observed occur in modules with a surface area of more than 2.5 square meters. The largest modules on the market today cover more than 3 square meters. The size of the modules is one cause of glass breakage. The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) has tested in the laboratory what other correlations there are.

With the trend towards double glass sided modules as seen in Bifacials, or TOPCon with double glass sided construction, the changes in solar PV module design and materials mean breakages are now a bigger risk than ever. These breakages can be due to many reasons and no single factor bears the sole responsibility of operators' woes.

In principle, glass breakages are nothing unusual. What is new is that they have been occurring a few months after installation and without any external influence. Neither extreme weather nor installation errors cause the breakages. Cases are recorded for both framed and unframed glass-glass modules, on the front and back.

The latter broke under a significantly lower load than the other module types. While the first glass-glass modules with thinner glass and the first glass-foil modules only showed cracks at more than 5,400 pascals, this was the case for the modules with 2-millimeter glass between 3,500 and 4,700 pascals.