Design and Simulation of Thinned Silicon Photovoltaic Modules Enhancing Performance

Abstract

The thinning of crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cell is a trend from silicon photovoltaics. However, the thinning leads optical and efficiency loss. It is therefore necessary to make design to investigate thin c-Si cell and modules with enhanced performance. Here, we conduct design on the surfaces of 140 μm-thick c-Si cells to enhance the efficiency as well as output power of its module. Compared with the reference cell, the simulation results show that the absolute efficiency is improved by 0.5% from 21.8% to 22.3% by the optimal design. When the module made of thinned c-Si cells is used, the calculation results show the maximum output power reaches 390W, which is 14W greater than 376W of the reference module, resulting in a relative enhancement of 3.7%. Furthermore, angular dependent output power is investigated, revealing a main difference in the incident angle of 0º to 30º.

Keywords: Photovoltaics, silicon, module, design, simulations