pv magazine Test: February 2025 Results
By George Touloupas and Huatian Xu
This article was originally published in pv magazine – April 2025 edition. Learn more about the pv magazine test here.
George Touloupas, vice president of ESG and new services at Clean Energy Associates, and Huatian Xu, director of technology and quality, analyze the February 2025 results from the pv magazine outdoor test installation in Yinchuan, China.
At the end of February 2025, three new samples - two tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) samples from SEG Solar and Astronergy and our first n-type back contact sample from Aiko – arrived in Yinchuan and were installed at the beginning of March. The outdoor data for these will be published next month.
As all samples are now bifacial n-type products, we have stopped calculating the bifacial boost with respect to the monofacial product baseline. We are working with our partners to introduce a new baseline based on the energy yield of reference PERC bifacial modules.
Figure 1: Daily temperature and irradiance data - February 2025
Monthly highlight
We have recently observed that the modules with large cell sizes underperformed. Our initial investigation found an average temperature gap of 1.5 C compared to modules with smaller cells, partially explaining the underperformance. Upon further investigation, we identified certain inefficiencies in the operation of the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) that disadvantaged modules with larger cells and lower voltage. The results of this month have been normalized to account for the MPPT discrepancies, and this can be observed in the reduction of the ranks from 3 to 2.
Table 1: Specific energy yield ranking January to February 2025
Figure 2: Specific energy yield of N-type bifacial (TOPCon & HJT) modules for February 2025
Test partnership
pv magazine test is expanding to the Middle East in 2025. With testing and inspection services provider Gulf Renewable Energy Lab, we have added a new outdoor testing site in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, and will be monitoring the latest PV module technologies performance in this harsh desert climate, as well as at the existing test installation in Yinchuan, China. pv magazine Publisher Eckhart Gouras confirmed the agreement with Gulf Renewable Energy Lab General Manager for TIC Services Mohammed Alghamdi at the SunRise Arabia Clean Energy Conference hosted by pv magazine and Solarabic in Riyadh in February 2025.
The pv magazine outdoor test installation is hosted at the CPVT test site in Yinchuan, China.
George Touloupas and Huatian Xu of Intertek CEA analyze the January 2026 results from the pv magazine test outdoor installations in Yinchuan, China, and Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
George Touloupas, Vice President of ESG and New Services at Intertek CEA, and Huatian Xu, Director of Technology and Quality, analyze the November-December 2025 results from the pv magazine test outdoor installations in Yinchuan, China, and Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
pv magazine Test: George Touloupas, Vice President of ESG and New Services at Intertek CEA, and Huatian Xu, Director of Technology and Quality, analyze the October 2025 results from the pv magazine test outdoor installations in Yinchuan, China, and Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
George Touloupas, Vice President of ESG and New Services at Intertek CEA, and Huatian Xu, Director of Technology and Quality, analyze the September 2025 results from the pv magazine test outdoor installations in Yinchuan, China, and Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
George Touloupas, Vice President of ESG and New Services at Intertek CEA, and Huatian Xu, Director of Technology and Quality, analyze the August 2025 results from the pv magazine test outdoor installations in Yinchuan, China, and Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
George Touloupas, Vice President of ESG and New Services at Intertek CEA, and Huatian Xu, the company’s Director of Technology and Quality, analyze the first three months of performance data from the new pv magazine outdoor test installation in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
George Touloupas, Intertek CEA’s Vice President of ESG and New Services, and Huatian Xu, CEA’s Director of Technology and Quality, analyze the May and June 2025 results from the pv magazine test outdoor installation in Yinchuan, China.
George Touloupas, Vice President of ESG and New Services at Intertek CEA, and Huatian Xu, Intertek CEA’s Director of Technology and Quality, analyze the April 2025 results from the pv magazine test outdoor installation in Yinchuan, China.
SEG Solar and Astronergy supplied new tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) modules, alongside an n-type back-contact sample from Aiko, for installation in the first week of March 2025. To add these new products to the comparison table in these results, we removed the production data from before March 7. Due to downtime for system upgrades, we also did not capture data for three days in March and therefore had to remove those days from the total energy yield calculation. Finally, three products using 210 mm square cells were removed from the data, as we identified anomalies in the production figures caused by the maximum power point tracking algorithm. The data from those products will be reported again as soon as the issues are resolved.
At the end of February 2025, three new samples - two tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) samples from SEG Solar and Astronergy and our first n-type back contact sample from Aiko – arrived in Yinchuan and were installed at the beginning of March. The outdoor data for these will be published next month.
The new outdoor test field in Yinchuan, China, began operations on Dec. 9, 2024. Due to system modifications, the data of Dec. 23 were removed. In January, we were close to getting a full month’s worth of data, but unfortunately, due to an operational error, we lost data for several modules after Jan. 24. At present, this problem has been solved and we expect that a full month’s data will be presented in the next issue of pv magazine.
After more than seven years, pv magazine test is entering a new phase. Significant changes are on the horizon as we update and overhaul the program. George Touloupas, Vice President, ESG and New Services at Clean Energy Associates (CEA), and Huatian Xu, Director of Technology and Quality at CEA, introduce the new “pv magazine test 2.0” setup to assess PV modules in the lab and outdoors.
George Touloupas, senior director of technology and quality at Clean Energy Associates, presents the November and December 2024 results from the pv magazine test site in Xi’an, China. These are the final results from this installation, as we prepare to launch a brand new pv magazine test program for 2025 – the full details will appear in next month’s edition.
George Touloupas, CEA’s Senior Director of Technology and Quality, and Huatian Xu, CEA’s Associate Director of Technology and Quality, present a summary of the 2024 pv magazine test results, the ranking throughout the year, and the trends that emerge.
George Touloupas, Senior Director of Technology and Quality for Clean Energy Associates (CEA), analyzes the October 2024 energy-yield results from the outdoor testing field in Xi’an, China.
George Touloupas, Senior Director of Technology and Quality for Clean Energy Associates (CEA), analyzes the September 2024 energy-yield results from the outdoor testing field in Xi’an, China.
George Touloupas, Senior Director of Technology and Quality for Clean Energy Associates (CEA), analyzes the August 2024 energy-yield results from the outdoor testing field in Xi’an, China.
George Touloupas, Senior Director of Technology and Quality for Clean Energy Associates (CEA), analyzes the July 2024 energy-yield results from the outdoor testing field in Xi’an, China.
George Touloupas, Senior Director of Technology and Quality for Clean Energy Associates (CEA), analyzes the June 2024 energy-yield results from the outdoor testing field in Xi’an, China.
George Touloupas, Senior Director of Technology and Quality for Clean Energy Associates (CEA), analyzes the April 2024 energy-yield results from the outdoor testing field in Xi’an, China.
George Touloupas, senior director of technology and quality for Clean Energy Associates (CEA), analyzes the March 2024 energy-yield results from the outdoor testing field in Xi’an, China.
George Touloupas, Vice President of ESG and New Services at Clean Energy Associates, and Huatian Xu, Director of Technology and Quality, analyze the March 2025 results from the pv magazine outdoor test installation in Yinchuan, China.
George Touloupas, Vice President of ESG and New Services at Clean Energy Associates, and Huatian Xu, Director of Technology and Quality, analyze the March 2025 results from the pv magazine outdoor test installation in Yinchuan, China.
George Touloupas, Vice President of ESG and New Services at Clean Energy Associates (CEA), and Huatian Xu, CEA’s Director of Technology and Quality, analyze the April 2025 results from the pv magazine test outdoor installation in Yinchuan, China.
October 2023 batch of energy yield results from the pv magazine outdoor test field in Xi’an, China. The average bifacial boost is 10.20%. As the energy yield figures of several top-performing products are very close, CEA is working on a new ranking system that will be more representative of product performance.