Performance Optimization of Silicon Cells by Solar Spectrum Splitting Technology

Abstract

Silicon cell is one of the promising technologies which can convert the incident solar radiation into electric power directly. Meanwhile, PV conversion is a highly spectrally dependent quantum process and most silicon PV cells have good spectral response from 400nm to 1100nm. In this paper, a solar beam splitting technology is introduced, which uses an optical thin-film filter that can be applied to hybrid solar system such as photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) systems. In addition, we summarize the filter design theory and the performance of optical dielectric thin-film interference filter. The next parts of this paper involve the calculation of the cell temperature and efficiency including the analyze models and results. The final conclusion is that, at the same condition of incident solar radiation and cooling effect, the cell efficiency is higher in the solar splitting system compared to that without splitter.