Design of a solar cell electrode for a shingled photovoltaic module application

Abstract

New technologies to fabricate high-output power photovoltaic (PV) modules include a cell dividing and bonding technique. This technique divides and interconnects cells into a string arranged in series and in parallel to produce a module. Therefore, we designed a 3–6 dividing front electrode structure that is suitable for the shingled module. Thus, power loss was calculated based on the number of cell divisions and the number of fingers. The simulation results indicated that increases in the number of cells to be divided decreased the number of fingers exhibiting the maximum efficiency. The number of fingers optimized for division in to 5 cells was 128. Additionally, the power conversion efficiency was 17.346%, and this corresponded to the highest efficiency among various electrode structures for division from three to six solar cells. The optimized finger number for division into 3 cells was 171, and this corresponded to the lowest efficiency of 16.855%. The multi-crystalline silicon solar cells exhibiting a finger number of 100 were fabricated to compare with the simulation results. We analyzed the characteristics and obtained results that were nearly similar to those of the simulation. For application to a shingled module, a solar cell with an appropriate electrode structure was divided into 5 cells via the laser scribing system, subsequently bonded with an electrically conductive adhesive (ECA), and the characteristics were analyzed.