The Large Area Pulsed Solar Simulator (LAPSS)

A Large Area Pulsed Solar Simulator (LAPSS) has been installed at JPL. It is primarily intended to be used to illuminate and measure the electrical performance of photovoltaic devices. The simulator, originally manufactured by Spectrolab, Sylmar, California, occupies an area measuring about 3 meters wide by 12 meters long. The data acquisition and data processing subsystems have been modernized. Tests on the LAPSS performance resulted in better than +/- 2 percent uniformity of irradiance at the test plane and better than +/- 0.3 percent measurement repeatability after warm-up. Glass absorption filters are used to reduce the level of ultraviolet light emitted from the xenon flash lamps. This provides a close match to standard airmass zero and airmass 1.5 spectral irradiance distributions. The 2 millisecond light pulse prevents heating of the device under test, resulting in more reliable temperature measurements. Overall, excellent electrical performance measurements have been made of many different types and sizes of photovoltaic devices.