Increased power collection efficiency of conventional silicon photovoltaic modules with holographic light management techniques

Abstract

Conventional silicon Photovoltaic (PV) modules often have a significant surface obstruction that reduces the collection of incident solar illumination and energy conversion efficiency. In this paper, light management methods that combine low cost holographic optical elements and diffusers into conventional PV modules are evaluated to capture unused illumination. It is found that by using reflection volume holograms (RVHs) with 300 nm spectral bandwidth in combination with a diffuser on a PV module with 12% of its surface area not covered with active PV cell regions that an improvement in power collection efficiency of 9.36% is possible.