Abstract
Light trapping is a commonly used technique for enhancing the efficiency of solar collection in many photovoltaic (PV) devices. In this paper, we present the design of multi-layer light trapping structures that can potentially be retrofitted, or directly integrated, onto crystalline or amorphous silicon solar panels for enhanced optical collection at normal and extreme angle of incidence. This approach can improve the daily optical collection performance of solar panel with and without internally integrated light trapping structure by up to 7.18% and 159.93%, respectively. These improvements predict an enhancement beyond many research level and commercially deployed light trapping technologies. We further enhance this performance by combining our multi-layer optics with high refractive index materials to achieve a daily optical collection of up to 32.20% beyond leading light trapping structures. Our additive light trapping designs could enable the upgradeability of older PV technologies and can be tailored to optimally operate at unique angular ranges for building exteriors or over a wide range of incidence angle for applications such as unmanned aerial vehicles.
Highlights
Solar photovoltaic (PV) continues to transform the global energy economy as the dominant technology to harness solar energy and one of the cheapest routes to supply electricity [1]
Our optical designs can be added onto solar panels with and without internally integrated light trapping structures to achieve further increases in path length and absorption probability for both normal and extreme incidences. We explore these designs through modelling the optical power increase with the addition of each design onto a textured crystalline silicon solar panel and an untextured amorphous silicon solar panel
We evaluate the light trapping performance of these structures by modelling the solar collection within the photovoltaic cell with and without our retrofitted optical design, where the solar collection is defined as the fraction of optical power incident on the optical elements that can be absorbed by the active layer of the solar cell
Summary
Solar photovoltaic (PV) continues to transform the global energy economy as the dominant technology to harness solar energy and one of the cheapest routes to supply electricity [1]. Our models predict that for the use of higher refractive index materials, we could see up to 32.20% and 318.64% increase in the daily solar collection for the crystalline and amorphous silicon solar panel, respectively The use of this novel optics-material combination does help with minimising the intermediate reflection losses, and aid light coupling and light trapping for a wide range of incident angles. These gains may vary depending on the solar panel technology and we expect these gains to be higher for solar panels with lower power conversion efficiency
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