Early degradation of PV modules and guaranty conditions

CIEMAT PVLabDER has largely increased its demand on testing and characterizing PV plants, according to the fast growth of PV installed capacity in Spain. One of the topics in which manufacturers, promoters, and owners of the plants are more interested in, is the possible degradation of PV modules and its relationship to guarantee contracts, as it is related to subsidies. This paper presents some findings in campaigns of PV plants evaluation carried out during last years. This evaluation usually consists of visual inspection, I-V curve measurement in the fields (the whole plant or selected areas), thermal evaluation by IR imaging, and, in some cases, measurement of the I-V characteristic and thermal behaviour of selected modules in the plant, chosen by the laboratory. It must be noticed that new defects that grow when the module is into operation may appear in modules initially free of them (named as hidden manufacturing defects). Usually some of these hidden defects that only appear in normal operation are not detected in reliability tests (EN61215 or EN 61646) [4][5] due to the different operational conditions of the module in the standard tests and in the field (serial-parallel connection of many PV modules, power inverter influence, over voltage on wires, etc.

Early degradation of PV modules and guaranty conditions

CIEMAT PVLabDER has largely increased its demand on testing and characterizing PV plants, according to the fast growth of PV installed capacity in Spain. One of the topics in which manufacturers, promoters, and owners of the plants are more interested in, is the possible degradation of PV modules and its relationship to guarantee contracts, as it is related to subsidies. This paper presents some findings in campaigns of PV plants evaluation carried out during last years. This evaluation usually consists of visual inspection, I-V curve measurement in the fields (the whole plant or selected areas), thermal evaluation by IR imaging, and, in some cases, measurement of the I-V characteristic and thermal behaviour of selected modules in the plant, chosen by the laboratory. It must be noticed that new defects that grow when the module is into operation may appear in modules initially free of them (named as hidden manufacturing defects). Usually some of these hidden defects that only appear in normal operation are not detected in reliability tests (EN61215 or EN 61646) [4][5] due to the different operational conditions of the module in the standard tests and in the field (serial-parallel connection of many PV modules, power inverter influence, over voltage on wires, etc.

Técnicas de separação biomimética em microfluídica

A separação e a identificação de células são essenciais em várias aplicações biomédicas, incluindo a biologia celular e os métodos de diagnóstico e terapêuticos. O sangue é um fluido não-Newtoniano contendo inúmeras informações preciosas sobre o estado fisiológico e patológico do corpo humano. No entanto, devido à sua complexidade, existem actualmente poucos métodos de análise precisos. A maioria das técnicas convencionais usadas na separação e contagem de células são dispendiosas e normalmente é necessário usar agentes externos adicionais para identificar as células. As técnicas biomiméticas de separação em microfluídica usam fenómenos microfluídicos, que ocorrem à microescala, para realizar a separação de determinadas células sanguíneas. Estes fenómenos incluem a separação do plasma, a camada livre de células (CLC), a migração dos glóbulos brancos (GBs), também designados por leucócitos, e a lei da bifurcação. Recentemente, vários investigadores têm replicado estes efeitos, que acontecem em ambientes in vivo, em sistemas microfluídicos, ou seja, em ambientes in vitro. Nos microcanais, os glóbulos vermelhos (GVs), devido à sua deformabilidade e ao gradiente de velocidades (às forças de sustentação), tendem a concentrar-se na zona central dos microcanais, enquanto os GBs e os GVs rígidos (tal como, os GVs infectados com malária) tendem a migrar para a CLC que se forma nas zonas próximas das paredes. A lei da bifurcação estabelece, relativamente ao comportamento dos GVs, que em microcanais com bifurcações eles tendem a escolher o microcanal de secção maior.Os autores agradecem à FCT, COMPETE, QREN e União Europeia (FEDER) pelo financiamento através dos seguintes projetos: PTDC/SAU-BEB/105650/2008, PTDC/SAU-BEB/108728/2008, PTDC/EME-MFE/099109/2008 ePTDC/SAU-ENB/116929/2010

Influence of initial power stabilization over crystalline-Si photovoltaic modules maximum power

Measurements that suppliers offer in specification sheets are not always close to the actual power measured in independent laboratories such as CIEMAT. Independent measurements tend to be lower than those printed on the label sometimes even lower than the allowed tolerance indicated by the manufacturer on the same label. Furthermore, a potentially significant power reduction has been reported when Standard EN50380 (which requires photovoltaic (PV) modules to be exposed to more than 20 kWh/m2 of sunlight prior to taking the measurements that appear on the label) is followed. This is the initial power stabilization and this work studies the power stabilization that tends to appear in crystalline PV modules. Crystalline PV modules usually decrease in power around 1%, but decreases >4% have also been reported. These power losses are only detected after the mentioned power stabilizatio

Data Science: The state of the art

As organizações têm cada vez mais acesso a um maior volume de dados. A contribuir para este fenómeno está o desenvolvimento tecnológico e o conceito de internet das coisas, que permite cada vez mais interligar mecanismos e dispositivos, e consequentemente, diversificar as fontes de informação. Esta evolução tecnológica permite que os dados sejam retirados das mais diversas formas e plataformas, quer qualitativa quer quantitativamente. Este fenómeno que designamos por Big Data, está a tornar disruptivas muitas empresas, alterando desta forma modelos de negócio, inovando o marketing, produtos e serviços e tornando ainda algumas organizações mais eficientes. Sabe-se também que as capacidades analíticas das empresas têm de dar resposta a este crescimento de dados através de modelos mais avançados, orientados para tomadas de decisões mais acertadas, como a análise preditiva e prescritiva, e recorrendo a técnicas de Data Mining ou Machine Learning por forma a otimizar a gestão dos recursos e contribuindo para a eficácia e eficiência das organizações. Esta condição obriga as empresas a aumentar a sua capacidade de adaptação e decisão, para que os dados e a sua compreensão se tornem fontes de vantagem competitivaOrganizations increasingly have access to a growing volume of data. Contributing to this is the technological development and the concept of the internet of things, which allows increasingly interconnecting mechanisms and devices, and consequently diversify the sources of information. This technological evolution allows the data to be withdrawn in the most diverse forms and platforms, both qualitatively and quantitatively. This phenomenon, which we call Big Data, is disrupting many companies. Changing this way, business models, innovating the marketing, products and services, still making some organizations more efficient. It is also known that the analytical capabilities of companies have to respond to this increase in data through more advanced models oriented towards better decision making, such as predictive and prescriptive analysis and using Data Mining or Machine Learning techniques to optimize the management of resources and contributing to efficiency and effectiveness. This condition forces companies to increase their ability to adapt and make decisions, so that data and their understanding become sources of competitive advantage

Ecological host fitting of Trypanosoma cruzi TcI in Bolivia: mosaic population structure, hybridization and a role for humans in Andean parasite dispersal.

An improved understanding of how a parasite species exploits its genetic repertoire to colonize novel hosts and environmental niches is crucial to establish the epidemiological risk associated with emergent pathogenic genotypes. Trypanosoma cruzi, a genetically heterogeneous, multi-host zoonosis, provides an ideal system to examine the sylvatic diversification of parasitic protozoa. In Bolivia, T. cruzi I, the oldest and most widespread genetic lineage, is pervasive across a range of ecological clines. High-resolution nuclear (26 loci) and mitochondrial (10 loci) genotyping of 199 contemporaneous sylvatic TcI clones was undertaken to provide insights into the biogeographical basis of T. cruzi evolution. Three distinct sylvatic parasite transmission cycles were identified: one highland population among terrestrial rodent and triatomine species, composed of genetically homogenous strains (Ar = 2.95; PA/L = 0.61; DAS = 0.151), and two highly diverse, parasite assemblages circulating among predominantly arboreal mammals and vectors in the lowlands (Ar = 3.40 and 3.93; PA/L = 1.12 and 0.60; DAS = 0.425 and 0.311, respectively). Very limited gene flow between neighbouring terrestrial highland and arboreal lowland areas (distance ~220 km; FST = 0.42 and 0.35) but strong connectivity between ecologically similar but geographically disparate terrestrial highland ecotopes (distance >465 km; FST = 0.016-0.084) strongly supports ecological host fitting as the predominant mechanism of parasite diversification. Dissimilar heterozygosity estimates (excess in highlands, deficit in lowlands) and mitochondrial introgression among lowland strains may indicate fundamental differences in mating strategies between populations. Finally, accelerated parasite dissemination between densely populated, highland areas, compared to uninhabited lowland foci, likely reflects passive, long-range anthroponotic dispersal. The impact of humans on the risk of epizootic Chagas disease transmission in Bolivia is discussed

Recommender system for sport videos based on user audiovisual consumption

This paper describes a recommender system for sport videos, transmitted over the Internet and/or broadcast, in the context of large-scale events, which has been tested for the Olympic Games. The recommender is based on audiovisual consumption and does not depend on the number of users, running only on the client side. This avoids the concurrence, computation and privacy problems of central server approaches in scenarios with a large number of users, such as the Olympic Games. The system has been designed to take advantage of the information available in the videos, which is used along with the implicit information of the user and the modeling of his/her audiovisual content consumption. The system is thus transparent to the user, who does not need to take any specific action. Another important characteristic is that the system can produce recommendations for both live and recorded events. Testing has showed advantages compared to previous systems, as will be shown in the results