The existing qualification tests described in the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards on terrestrial PV modules (such as IEC 61215) are designed for the field performance of silicon panels to screen for well-understood degradation modes generally associated to the large market application.

These tests cannot be applied to emerging photovoltaic devices such as  OPV cells, DSSCs and PSCs because of their fundamentally different material properties and device architectures.  

Various studies  have been performed to understand the degradation mechanisms in emerging PV systems. Unfortunately, these studies lacked consistency in the assessment and reporting procedures, which prevented data comparison and, consequently, the identification of various degradation factors and failure mechanisms.

A very wide  group of scientists involving different countries and organziations and led by Prof. Mónica Lira-Cantú (ICN2) and Prof. Eugene A. Katz (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), have reached a consensus on the suitable procedures applied to halide perovskite solar cells, a new generation of solar cells called to overcome the present state-of-the-art technologies.

The results are now published in Nature Energy volume 5, pages35–49(2020)

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