PV module reliability scorecard?

[DanKegel]

Some outfit did a press release announcing their "2017 PV Module Reliability Scorecard". (Easy to find if you search for it.)
Has anyone looked at that or previous versions, and did you find it useful?

I didn't bother to download it, they require an email address, and I'm not in the market right now.

[JSchnee21]

Hi Dan,

I have seen the 2016 report before, and downloaded and reviewed the 2017 report earlier this morning. It has pro's and con's. My biggest gripe with this particular report vendor is that the actual scores for each vendor are hidden and all you see is an alphabetical list of the "best" performers.

I general:

1) Kyocera, Qcells, Trina, Solar World, and SunPower (when they get tested) perform well. If you look at the historical reports and other reports from other vendors, Kyocera seems to come out on top very often (across multiple independent reports). But, in terms of market share in the US (and the likelihood of finding a local vendor with a competitive price) Kyocera panels are hard to come by. Though quite a few vendors will do Trina or QCell if you ask. SolarWorld used a be a go to brand, but with the recent bankruptcy, they may not be a good choice going further.

2) Coverage on most of these types of reports is pretty lacking (I assume vendors need to opt-in/pay/provide samples to be included). What I'd really want to see is SunPower, LG, Panasonic, Trina, QCell, SolarWorld, Canadian Solar, etc. go head to head, with rankings for each metric. Similarly, each of these vendors has various models -- do they all perform as well? Has each new version been getting better (aka NeonX, Neon2, NeonR, etc.) OR worse?

I put a lot of faith in the Fraunhofer reports some of which you can get through pv-tech.org (or Googling around) for free. If you're not familiar the Fraunhofer Society is a very widely regarded research institute across a wide area of scientific and engineering disciplines.

https://www.fraunhofer.de/en.html

If you actually pay money for the reports, usually you get to see all of the vendor names (at least that's how it work in my profession of scientific instrumentation). But I never purchased on the of the Fraunhofer (or other's) reports to see.

-Jonathan