pv magazine test: November-December 2025 Results
By George Touloupas and Huatian Xu
This article was originally published in pv magazine – November-December 2025 edition. Learn more about the pv magazine test here.
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 November-December 2025 results from the pv magazine test outdoor installations in Yinchuan, China, and Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
Notable testing disruptions occurred when the data transmission system malfunctioned on Nov. 4, 25 and 26, and the data were removed from the test site in Yinchuan, China. Samples installed before February 2025 were removed from the field on Dec. 9 for a power retest to evaluate their degradation after one year of operation. The samples were reinstalled after Dec. 22, except the Longi tunnel-oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) sample that was kept for further testing for performance evalutation. This module is not included in December performance data.
The test site in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, experienced various technical interruptions in November and December 2025. The field results for Nov. 16 and 30, as well as Dec. 1 to 6, 14 to 20, 16, and 30, have been excluded. These gaps were caused by regional power outages in Dammam, scheduled work in the test field, and significant communication issues throughout December. Consequently, both meteorological and production records for these dates were removed to ensure the overall integrity of the dataset. Irradiance and temperature were slightly lower in November and December, but the relative performance of the products remained unchanged.
Figure 1: Daily meteo station data from Yinchuan and Dammam, November and December 2025
Monthly highlights
Despite three days of missing generation data, November’s energy yield from Yinchuan significantly outperformed October’s. This increase was driven by higher irradiance and more favorable (lower) operating temperatures. However, power retests conducted in December revealed that certain samples experienced higher- than-expected power loss. We have identified maximum power degradation as the primary factor behind the recent drop in performance ranking. A comprehensive analysis will be included in next month’s issue.
Table 1: Specific energy yield ranking from Yinchuan, November and December 2025
Table 2: Specific energy yield ranking from Dammam, November and December 2025
Figure 2: Specific energy yield of modules Yinchuan and Dammam, November and December 2025
