Based on the company’s brand concept of ‘customer value first’, ‘LONGi Lifecycle Quality’ was established to guarantee that its products perform reliably and efficiently throughout their lifespan, allowing clients to achieve a high return on investment throughout the entire lifecycle of a PV plant.
Adapting to different climatic scenarios
Operating globally, PV modules find themselves confronted with various climatic challenges, such as hail, storms, heavy snow and high temperatures. LONGi products are designed to withstand challenges of this type, due to the company adopting different testing methods to simulate a comprehensive set of application scenarios at its Reliability Testing Center.
LONGi maintains a highly professional approach throughout the full lifecycle of module production, starting with the selection of materials. Full-scenario protection has been upgraded with internal standards significantly stricter than those commonly found externally, as illustrated by the example of the company initiating the introduction of thermal runaway tests for junction boxes and bending strength tests for glass.
Looking closely at diverse climatic conditions, LONGi has for some time used comprehensive ageing testing, simulating application scenarios such as low-latitude monsoon, tropical rain forest, mountain and desert to better verify product reliability under real world scenarios.
Enduring snow and low temperature
The conventional static mechanical load was tested at room temperature, without considering the low temperatures accompanying static snow loads over PV modules, especially during winter in high-latitude temperate continental and high-altitude mountain climates. LONGi is the forerunner to propose low-temperature static mechanical load testing, simultaneously applying low temperature and static mechanical load to modules in order to accurately validate product endurance under a combination of snow load and low temperature.
Windproofing excellence
PV plants and modules located in tropical, subtropical and other coastal typhoon climates such as in the Philippines, Australia and the southeast coast of China, naturally need verification of performance in extreme weather conditions. As module manufacturer, LONGi is at the forefront of linking wind tunnel testing to module design and installation, subjecting modules to maximum wind speeds of 60m/s, equivalent to a 17 magnitude hurricane, to verify their ability to withstand catastrophic weather.
Hail resistance
Modules operating in temperate or subtropical continental climates will regularly encounter hailstorms induced by a rapid drop in temperature. LONGi’s approach to verifying a module’s resistance to such conditions is to enlarge the size of hailstones simulated in reliability testing to more than 35mm, to substantially exceed the challenge likely to be experienced in a real world scenario.
Floating PV plants
PV installation is, as we know, not limited to land, with floating PV plants becoming increasingly commonplace around the world on the surface of various bodies of water. The ability of LONGi modules to operate efficiently over temperature-rising waters is well known within the industry.
High efficiency with reasonable size
Thoughtful design of module size is a factor in reliability. Research carried out by LONGi suggests that larger modules deliver higher power but also increase stress and risk of deformation, resulting in potential degradation of performance. Under its brand concept of ‘Steadfast and Reliable Technology Leadership’, LONGi designs its modules with the objective of achieving an ideal balance between size and power output.
