Solar Simulation and PV Testing Equipment

Sciencetech offers a diverse line of solar simulators and testing equipment.

Steady State Solar Simulators	Flash Solar Simulators	Photovoltaic Testing System
IV Testing Equipment	Filters for Solar Simulation	Accessories for Solar Simulators

Sciencetech Solar Simulator

SCIENCETECH solar simulators produce high intensity, uniform illumination on a target area. Typically, high power solar simulators use an ellipsoidal reflector to capture light from an arc lamp source inside the reflector, an arrangement that results in a light pattern with a bright outer region and a dark center. This non-uniformity is un- acceptable in many solar simulator applications and as a result, forces many of our solar simulator competitors to use designs involving diffusers to reduce the non-uniformity. This results in a reduction of intensity and a distortion of the spectrum on the target area.  

Sciencetech’s solution to these problems is to use a unique system of mirrors that ‘fold’ the light onto the target plane, effectively reducing the light that is lost with little to no spectral distortion and also ensures no chromatic aberration in the output beam.

In addition, each of Sciencetech’s solar simulators are customizable to best suit your requirements. The design of the fully reflective solar simulator permits a trade-off between power and uniformity. Higher uniformity can be achieved with lower power; or power can be increased when uniformity is reduced.

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An introduction of SCIENCETECH Ultra High Efficiency Solar Simulator UHE-NL-150 with I-V testing equipment. We manufacture many other varieties of solar simulators and this demonstration is applicable to our other solar simulator types as well. All the instructions in the video will also be provided in the manual that comes along with the system.

Webinar: Versatile Solar Simulators to Explore Unlimited research Opportunities

This webinar is an overview of the guidelines and principles behind solar Simulator.

SCIENCETECH Solar Simulators Models

SCIENCETECH Inc. designs and fabricates more than thirty different variants of Solar Simulators, as shown in the following table.

The Solar Constant and Solar Simulation 

The radiation from the Sun is measured in two ways for a variety of fields of research. The solar constant is the irradiance or intensity of light incident at the surface of the Earth’s atmosphere on a plane normal to the angle of incidence.

This value has been defined by the World Meteorological Organization to be 1366.7W/m² outside the atmosphere.

The irradiance of the Sun at the Earth’s surface varies under different conditions due to absorption and scattering effects in the atmosphere, and so a number of other constants are important in regards to the irradiance of a solar simulator. 

* All Measurements are at sea level, excluding AM0

Below the atmosphere the radiation emitted from the Sun can be divided into two components: direct radiation that comes from the Sun itself, and scattered radiation coming from the rest of the sky, including a portion reflected back from the ground. Solar simulators are adjusted to imitate the spectral distribution of sunlight for a variety of environments; to do this the spectral distribution from the xenon arc lamp source is altered and refined using Air Mass (AM) filters.

When discussing filters, the direct radiation spectrum is imitated using a direct (D) filter, and the total including scattered sky and ground radiation is matched by using a global (G) filter that imitates both components together. 

The table above gives the 1 SUN irradiance values for both of Sciencetech’s filter types at a number of common conditions that can be simulated, as well as the approximate transmission values relative to unfiltered light between 250-2500nm.

 Sciencetech’s AM filters are designed to be used individually for standard conditions, although they can also be arranged in series to produce other spectral distributions. Many solar simulator systems used by our competition require filters to be used in series to achieve the same performance as Sciencetech’s filters, for example using AM0 and AM1.0 filters in series to achieve a AM1.0 spectral distribution, whereas Sciencetech’s AM1.0 filter can be used alone to achieve the same result, reducing power loss and the cost of additional filters.

Most Sciencetech solar simulators use xenon arc lamps, which enables the system to produce an intense, collimated beam of light, similar to that of a 5.8K blackbody. The biggest difference between the two is the xenon lines are present in the arc spectrum, and atmospheric absorptions in solar spectra, which is especially highlighted in the 800-1100nm range because of the intense line output of the lamp. An AM0 filter can reduce this effect so that the average level in specified bands matches solar levels above the atmosphere to better than ±25%, although complete elimination of the xenon lines while preserving the rest of the spectrum is impossible with a practical filter. AM1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 filters further modify the visible and UV portions of the spectrum for different sea-level conditions, and coupled with the use of high pressure Xenon arc lamps Sciencetech is capable of producing Class A standards for our solar simulators.

The graphs on the left show the typical output spectra of Sciencetech’s fully reflective solar simulators. These spectral irradiance curves combine the spectral curves of the xenon arc lamp source, air mass filter, and mirrors used inside the solar simulator beam homogenizer.

Actual output spectra may vary due to the condition of the lamp and manufacturing tolerances of the air mass filters. In order to simplify visual comparison of the spectral curves of our solar simulators with ASTM E927-10 standard curves, the simulator outputs are normalized to the corresponding standard spectrum.