In order to observe the effects of environmental conditions on the outdoor performance of the installed PV technologies, a seasonal performance investigation was carried out. Specifically, a time series was constructed of the monthly average dc PR over the four-year evaluation period. The plots in figure 2 depict the constructed monthly average dc PR time series of all the PV technologies. It is evident from the plots that all technologies exhibit a seasonal behavior with peaks according to the seasons and with progressive performance loss that is more evident in some technologies than others. Both mono-c-Si and multi-c-Si technologies exhibited PR peaks during the cold winter season and performance decrease during the warm summer months as depicted in figures 2a and 2b respectively. The Suntechnics mono-c-Si exhibited high monthly PR that approached the optimum (PR of 100 %) during the winter seasons and in one case, December 2006, this value was even exceeded. This can occur because of the associated power rating and irradiation uncertainties that are present also in the calculated monthly PR value. From the PR plot of figure 2c of the a-Si technologies it was obvious that during the summer and early autumn, the performance was higher than in the winter. In addition, the high initial monthly PR of the a-Si technologies is primarily attributed to the fact that these technologies had not yet stabilized. Accordingly, the same seasonal performance pattern as the one of c-Si technologies was observed for the Wurth CIGS and First Solar CdTe, shown in figure 2d. In the case of the First Solar CdTe system a narrower peak-to-peak PR variation between the seasons was observed compared to the c-Si and CIGS seasonal behavior.
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