Estimation of power losses in single-junction gallium-arsenide solar photovoltaic cells

Abstract

Solar photovoltaic (PV) cell technology plays a vital role in generating a few watts to megawatts of scale electrical energy for residential as well as commercial uses. The power output of the PV arrays is directly affected by the solar cells’ connection schemes, like, parallel, series, and series-parallel. In this study, the fractional power losses in gallium arsenide (GaAs) PV cells with power ratings of 0.5 W, 3 W, and 5 W were analyzed with different cells arrangement considering simple series, parallel and series-parallel schemes. The solar cell array with a parallel connection scheme reduces power loss by 28.57% compared to series schemes. In the series-parallel scheme, the number of parallel connections (M) is increased from 2 to 14 which leads up to a 0.014% (M=2) to 0.3% (M=14) reduction in power loss for 0.5 W solar cells. In series and parallel connection schemes, the highest power loss of 5W cells in a range of 0.025-0.03 W and 3.5 × 10−3 to 4 × 10−3 W respectively.