Enhanced Energy Production by Corrugated Si Solar Sells Installed on Tracking/Anti-tracking Systems

Abstract

AbstractThe first chapter of this study describes modeling and design of the heterostructure cascaded solar cells with potential efficiency of 28–29%. Presence of few intrinsic layers built in a p–n junction, for example, p-i-i-n structure, provides highly efficient conversion of solar energy. Cascaded design could be applied to any heterojunction semiconductor material used in production of solar cells. In the current chapter, we present the design of corrugated surfaces applicable to common solar cells. Corrugation implies design of inverted pyramids on the surface of semiconductor solar cells. It is shown that a corrugated surface increases absorption of solar energy. Careful selection of anti-reflection coating (ARC), proper matching of refractive indices for semiconductor and ARC materials allows to significantly reduce the reflection of solar light. Combination of ARC with corrugated surfaces might be limited by properties of semiconductor materials and/or by the drawbacks associated with the production technology. In recent years, various research groups applied corrugation to surfaces of p-i-n solar cells. However, only researchers of Advanced Electronic Technology Center (AETC) at UMass applied ARC corrugation design to the cascaded Si solar cells. To allow solar cells to work longer hours under some illumination, we offer novel design of tracking/anti-tracking systems. Economic assessment of the system, which combines all three efficient factors, i.e., corrugation, ARC, tracking/ anti-tracking, is discussed at the end of the chapter.