pv magazine Test: April 2025 Results

By George Touloupas and Huatian Xu

This article was originally published in pv magazine – June 2025 edition. Learn more about the pv magazine test here.

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.

View previous PV Magazine Test Results

Connection issues were detected during a routine inspection of the site in April, so we ceased operations on April 23 and 24 to replace the faulty connectors. Meanwhile, we restarted reporting the energy yield of certain products with 210 mm square cells again this month after ensuring the accuracy of the maximum power point tracking. As we keep debugging the system, more 210 mm products will be gradually added back. Finally, Aiko’s back-contact module was removed from our table of data due to some data abnormalities.

*Figure 1: Daily temperature and irradiance data - April 2025*

This month, we are introducing a new performance index for the tested products based on energy production per unit of the front surface area of the PV module, whereas the current ranking is based on energy production per maximum power unit of the PV module.

Since one of the main criteria for selecting PV products is the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), we decided to add another index based on the energy production per unit of module surface area (kWh/m2). The new index has very strong dependency on the PV module front-side efficiency, which in turn has a big impact on the LCOE, as well as the energy production per installed maximum power (Wh/Wp), which we continue to measure.

A high-efficiency PV module, for example, a back-contact product, may be not ranking at the top based on energy production per maximum power, but may have higher energy per unit of area production in some cases. In order to establish a new ranking method that combines both performance aspects, we will keep monitoring the performance for both the Wh/Wp and kWh/ m2 of the samples, expecting that manufacturers will be incentivized to submit more higher-efficiency products.