NREL has this cool database (that needs populating!!).

It’s called the Technology Performance Exchange. You sign in as a user or a contributor, and you have access to performance data for 17 different types of technologies, from lamp ballasts to inverters, with more categories to come.

If you’re a user, you get to search through and compare energy performance data on up to 4 different products in the category, allowing you to evaluate energy and cost savings in energy simulations. Manufacturers, third party verifiers and ‘contributing evaluators’ are allowed to populate the database.

It’s a little spotty now, in terms of data available in all categories, but my quick wheel through it showed up a very well-populated PV category: 10,780 entries. I was able to narrow the search results by system or module, then by module efficiency, rated power, cell material, total # of cells, nominal operating  temp and three different performance coefficients.

Other categories, like ‘boilers’ have lots of placeholder entries (ie, brand, product line and model numbers), but have yet to be fully populated with performance data.

This is a big project, and will be über-useful when more completely populated. Spread the word!