Before assembling the cells into a solar panel or shipping them to manufacturers for further assembly, a solar cell efficiency test is conducted.
At the start of the production process, the efficiency of each solar cell will be tested. In modern cell production facilities, the solar cell efficiency test is fully automatic and already integrated into the production line. The final step of the cell production line is testing the cells on efficiency and categorizing these according to similar power outputs. Many small and medium solar panel manufacturers use a simple cell efficiency tester to measure the output of each cell piece-by piece. This can be a time-consuming way of testing the efficiency of solar cells. It also bears the danger of damaging the sensitive cells by careless workers. However, this form of solar cell testing is still widely applied for example in China where manual labor costs are still comparably low.
Solar cell efficiency tester. Another way to test the output of solar cells or rather the output of the complete module is using a flash test.