Outdoor investigation of the performance of three PV panels technologies in Morocco

Morocco is a country which enjoys an important potential of sunshine in many of its regions. MASEN (Moroccan Agency for Sustainable ENergy) is aiming to achieve the Kingdom objective to reach 52% energy needs through renewable energy by 2030. In this approach, the agency is launching many plants using different technologies, and especially Photovoltaic (PV) and Concentrated Solar Power (CSP). In this paper, a study of the durability of three different PV panels in two regions is presented. The study focuses on aging and soiling of these panels in two distinguished climatic stresses. Two types of comparison are made; the first one is between the behaviors of the three different panels, while the second one is between the different sites. Influence of soiling appears to be an important factor to study and a drop of 29% in maximal power was noticed after one month outdoor exposure. The aging is also studied during around 1000 days exposure. An annual loss between 0.44% and 1.1% is recorded in one site while in the other it is between 1.8% and 5.9% for the three devices.