About This Compendium

Purpose

This website catalogues photovoltaic (PV) underperformance root causes for diagnostic purposes. It is an open-source, project aimed at helping the industry. The community is invited to contribute by adding new root cause entries and improving existing ones.

Entry Structure

Every root cause entry provides:

• Category: Physical location or subsystem (e.g. Modules, Wiring, Inverter).
• Severity: Relative impact rating — Low (cosmetic or minor yield loss), Medium (notable degradation), High (critical failure or safety risk).
• Impact factor: Description of the performance or reliability consequence.
• Detection method: Field technique used to identify the condition.
• Mitigation: Recommended corrective or preventive action.
• Contributors: People who contributed the entry.
• Tags: Cross-reference taxonomy labels for multi-dimensional filtering.

Content Sources

Entries are compiled from published field inspection reports, manufacturer technical notes, and peer-reviewed PV reliability research. Each source is referenced in the associated Markdown content file.