Electricity from photovoltaic solar cells: Flat-Plate Solar Array Project final report. Volume VI: Engineering sciences and reliability

The Flat-Plate Solar Array (FSA) Project, funded by the U.S. Government and managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was formed in 1975 to develop the module/array technology needed to attain widespread terrestrial use of photovoltaics by 1985. To accomplish this, the FSA Project established and managed an Industry, University, and Federal Government Team to perform the needed research and development. This volume of the series of final reports documenting the FSA Project deals with the Project's activities directed at developing the engineering technology base required to achieve modules that meet the functional, safety and reliability requirements of large-scale terrestrial photovoltaic systems applications. These activities included: (1) development of functional, safety, and reliability requirements for such applications; (2) development of the engineering analytical approaches, test techniques, and design solutions required to meet the requirements; (3) synthesis and procurement of candidate designs for test and evaluation; and (4) performance of extensive testing, evaluation, and failure analysis to define design shortfalls and, thus, areas requiring additional research and development. During the life of the FSA Project, these activities were known by and included a variety of evolving organizational titles: Design and Test, Large-Scale Procurements, Engineering, Engineering Sciences, Operations, Module Performance and Failure Analysis, and at the end of the Project, Reliability and Engineering Sciences. This volume provides both a summary of the approach and technical outcome of these activities and provides a complete Bibliography (Appendix A) of the published documentation covering the detailed accomplishments and technologies developed

Flat-plate solar array project. Volume 6: Engineering sciences and reliability

The Flat-Plate Solar Array (FSA) Project activities directed at developing the engineering technology base required to achieve modules that meet the functional, safety, and reliability requirements of large scale terrestrial photovoltaic systems applications are reported. These activities included: (1) development of functional, safety, and reliability requirements for such applications; (2) development of the engineering analytical approaches, test techniques, and design solutions required to meet the requirements; (3) synthesis and procurement of candidate designs for test and evaluation; and (4) performance of extensive testing, evaluation, and failure analysis of define design shortfalls and, thus, areas requiring additional research and development. A summary of the approach and technical outcome of these activities are provided along with a complete bibliography of the published documentation covering the detailed accomplishments and technologies developed

Publications of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 1988

This bibliography describes and indexes by primary author the externally distributed technical reporting, released during calendar year 1988, that resulted from scientific and engineering work performed, or managed, by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Three classes of publications are included: JPL publications in which the information is complete for a specific accomplishment; articles from the quarterly Telecommunications and Data Acquisition (TDA) Progress Report; and articles published in the open literature

What should DOE do to help establish voluntary consensus standards for measuring and rating the performance of PV modules?

In response to concern expressed by the photovoltaics community over progress toward the establishment and issuance of concensus standards on photovoltaic performance measurements, a review of the status of and progress in developing these standards was conducted. It examined the roles of manufacturers, and consumers and the national laboratories funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in supporting this effort. This was done by means of a series of discussions with knowledgeable members of the photovoltaic community. Results of these interviews are summarized and a new approach to managing support of standards activity is recommended that responds to specific problems found in the performance measurement standards area. The study concludes that there is a positive role to be played by the U.S. Department of Energy in establishing collector performance measurement standards. It recommends that DOE continue to provide direct financial support for selected committees and for research at national laboratories, and that management of the activity be restructured to increase the authority and responsibility of the consensus committees

High level behavioural modelling of boundary scan architecture.

This project involves the development of a software tool which enables the integration of the IEEE 1149.1/JTAG Boundary Scan Test Architecture automatically into an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) design. The tool requires the original design (the ASIC) to be described in VHDL-IEEE 1076 Hardware Description Language. The tool consists of the two major elements: i) A parsing and insertion algorithm developed and implemented in 'C'; ii) A high level model of the Boundary Scan Test Architecture implemented in 'VHDL'. The parsing and insertion algorithm is developed to deal with identifying the design Input/Output (I/O) terminals, their types and the order they appear in the ASIC design. It then attaches suitable Boundary Scan Cells to each I/O, except power and ground and inserts the high level models of the full Boundary Scan Architecture into the ASIC without altering the design core structure

Photovoltaic Module Reliability Workshop 2010: February 18-19, 2010

NREL's Photovoltaic (PV) Module Reliability Workshop (PVMRW) brings together PV reliability experts to share information, leading to the improvement of PV module reliability. Such improvement reduces the cost of solar electricity and promotes investor confidence in the technology--both critical goals for moving PV technologies deeper into the electricity marketplace

Supply chain integration, product modularity, and market valuation: evidence from the solar energy industry

Supply chain integration is increasingly seen as a method to obtain flexibility and, consequently, to provide competitive advantage for firms within a supply chain. Product modularity, either in concert with or independent of such integration, can also produce flexibility for firms within a supply chain. In this proof-of-concept research, we explore whether the supply chain network affects each constituent firm's market valuation and how decisions regarding the level of supply chain integration and the usage of product modularity are associated with the value of the supply chain. We develop a method to identify and measure the supply chain's effect on each constituent firm's market valuation. Results indicate that greater integration is associated with a higher supply chain valuation, whereas increasing aggregated product modularity across the supply chain relates to a lower supply chain value. However, when combined, the interaction of aggregated product modularity and supply chain integration is positively associated with the supply chain's valuation

MAGNETO: Fingerprinting USB Flash Drives via Unintentional Magnetic Emissions

Universal Serial Bus (USB) Flash Drives are nowadays one of the most convenient and diffused means to transfer files, especially when no Internet connection is available. However, USB flash drives are also one of the most common attack vectors used to gain unauthorized access to host devices. For instance, it is possible to replace a USB drive so that when the USB key is connected, it would install passwords stealing tools, root-kit software, and other disrupting malware. In such a way, an attacker can steal sensitive information via the USB-connected devices, as well as inject any kind of malicious software into the host. To thwart the above-cited raising threats, we propose MAGNETO, an efficient, non-interactive, and privacy-preserving framework to verify the authenticity of a USB flash drive, rooted in the analysis of its unintentional magnetic emissions. We show that the magnetic emissions radiated during boot operations on a specific host are unique for each device, and sufficient to uniquely fingerprint both the brand and the model of the USB flash drive, or the specific USB device, depending on the used equipment. Our investigation on 59 different USB flash drives---belonging to 17 brands, including the top brands purchased on Amazon in mid-2019---, reveals a minimum classification accuracy of 98.2% in the identification of both brand and model, accompanied by a negligible time and computational overhead. MAGNETO can also identify the specific USB Flash drive, with a minimum classification accuracy of 91.2%. Overall, MAGNETO proves that unintentional magnetic emissions can be considered as a viable and reliable means to fingerprint read-only USB flash drives. Finally, future research directions in this domain are also discussed.Comment: Accepted for publication in ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS) in September 202