Abstract
With photovoltaic installations reaching into the 1 TWp range and the demand for green electric energy on the rise, every fraction of a percent of increased solar cell efficiency counts and would result in a substantial increase in annual energy yield of the installed photovoltaic capacities. An optimisation of the front metallic grid would provide a relatively simple jet cost-effective boost to the solar cell efficiency. We employed a freely available 2.5D photovoltaic simulator to model shading and resistive losses of the front metallisation grid and to further optimise the grid for annual energy yield regarding the irradiation distribution. We were therefore able to increase the effective efficiency of the simulated solar cells up to 1% over the whole year depending on the location.
Highlights
A booming market for photovoltaics (PV) has exceeded 400 GWp [1] of installed PV capacity in 2017 and the prognosis shows that it is to reach as much as 1 TWp of installed PV capacity by 2022/23 [2]
As PV technologies are spreading to every corner of the globe, an idea of optimising solar cells to their expected operating conditions instead of standard test conditions (STC), has arisen, maximising their annual energy yield instead of promoting performance at STC, since they hardly ever occur during field operation
In our contribution we evaluate the use of PhotoVoltaic Module Simulator (PVMOS) [5] as a tool to accurately
Summary
A booming market for photovoltaics (PV) has exceeded 400 GWp [1] of installed PV capacity in 2017 and the prognosis shows that it is to reach as much as 1 TWp of installed PV capacity by 2022/23 [2]. Since Silicon wafer based PV technologies still take up the majority of the global market [1], an optimisation of screen printed front metallisation of top contacted silicon solar cells, could lead to a vast energy yield increase with virtually no additional production costs [3]. In order to be able to accurately evaluate the effects of more complex front metallisation grids, to optimise them and to optimise them with respect to arbitrary operating conditions and annual energy yield, more elaborate numerical tools need to be employed. On that basis we will further optimise the metallisation grid at different irradiation levels, and try to estimate the impact on the annual energy yield. With that knowledge we will undertake the challenge of optimising a solar cell metallisation according to yearly irradiation distributions at different locations and assess the impact on estimated annual energy yield compared to STC cell optimisation
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