The spider environment

Visual composition is an interactive development of different applications by the direct manipulation of reusable components. We believe that the visual composition approach deals directly with the complexity of large software systems, making their development easier, more flexible, and easier to be understood. This is accomplished by implementing abstraction, reuse and visualization concepts. The developer becomes a component builder and no longer creates large applications that are hard to maintain and enhance. The user will have the freedom to choose the components he needs to build an application, and to mix and match components from different developers until the desired functionality is achieved. The visual Spider environment allows the creation of different kinds of applications. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Temperature‐induced changes in the performance of amorphous silicon multi‐junction modules in controlled light‐soaking

We extended our light‐soaking tests of amorphous silicon (a‐Si) modules, which were previously stabilized in light‐soaking experiments conducted at 50°C and 35°C module temperatures for a combined total of 1840 h, to further light exposure at a lower temperature (25°C). We definitively establish that changes in the exposure temperature significantly modify module performance. Furthermore, we have determined that subsequent degradation observed upon light exposure at a lower temperature is completely recovered to start‐of‐test values within the accuracy of our measurements, as the operating temperature is increased again to 50°C. The behavior is qualitatively similar in all modules tested, suggesting that the phenomena observed are governed by fundamental a‐Si properties. This conduct is consistent with the annual variations observed for a‐Si modules and systems deployed in the field, at climates that undergo significant temperature variations between winter and summer seasons. Because we have emulated the annual winter–summer oscillations twice, in a controlled‐climate, light‐soaking chamber and because module performance was always determined from simulator measurements performed at standard conditions, it is hard to defend the notion that the changes observed are either spectral or spectrally induced in nature. Published in 1999 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This article is a US government work and is in the public domain in the United States.