Experimental Determination of Power Losses and Heat Generation in Solar Cells for Photovoltaic-Thermal Applications
Name
11665_2018_3604_ReferencePDF.pdf
Size
1.15 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
8d46ad2a832f62099a07d9717989e490
Author(s)
Lorenzi, Bruno
Acciarri, Maurizio
Narducci, Dario
Date Issued
August 2018
Journal
Journal of Materials Engineering and Performance
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media
Citation
Lorenzi, Bruno et al. "Experimental Determination of Power Losses and Heat Generation in Solar Cells for Photovoltaic-Thermal Applications." Journal of Materials Engineering and Performance 27, 12 (August 2018): 6291–6298 © 2018 ASM International
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Solar cell thermal recovery has recently attracted more and more attention as a viable solution to increase photovoltaic efficiency. However, the convenience of the implementation of such a strategy is bound to the precise evaluation of the recoverable thermal power and to a proper definition of the losses occurring within the solar device. In this work, we establish a framework in which all solar cell losses are defined and described. The aim is to determine the components of the thermal fraction. We therefore describe an experimental method to precisely compute these components from the measurement of the external quantum efficiency, the current–voltage characteristics, and the reflectivity of the solar cell. Applying this method to three different types of devices (bulk, thin film, and multi-junction), we could exploit the relationships among losses for the main three generations of PV cells available nowadays. In addition, since the model is explicitly wavelength dependent, we could show how thermal losses in all cells occur over the whole solar spectrum, and not only in the infrared region. This demonstrates that profitable thermal harvesting technologies should enable heat recovery over the whole solar spectral range.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-018-3604-3
