Environmental and economic assessment of repair solutions for cracked backsheets in photovoltaic modules

Cracked backsheets have become an increasing problem for the reliability of photovoltaic modules. These
defects can cause insulation faults and accelerate degradation, therefore leading to a significant shortening of
the module lifetime. Repair solutions based on coatings have been developed to counteract this problem and
ensure that modules reach their expected lifetime. Besides the technical suitability of these repair solutions,
questions of environmental and economic feasibility should also be considered in regard to the
implementation potential of these measures. In this work, models assessing the repair process from an
environmental and economic standpoint have been developed and applied to several case studies
representing a broad spectrum of potential use cases. Results show that the repair process, when comparing
it to disposal with and without module replacement, is highly advantageous regarding the environmental
performance in almost every case while also providing good results from an economic standpoint