A method for estimating temperature dependent short circuit current

Author

Wilcox, J.R. ; Haas, A.W. ; Gray, J.L. ; Schwartz, R.J.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

19-24 June 2011

Abstract

Solar cell models that can be embedded easily into optical modeling programs have proven to be useful to study the tradeoffs inherent between the optics and solar cells in concentrating photovoltaic systems. In addition to modeling the optics and photovoltaics at 25°C, system designers would like to study the range of temperatures the system will experience during terrestrial operation. Methods for estimating temperature-dependent open-circuit voltage and fill factor have been shown. This leaves the need to accurately estimate the short-circuit current as a function of temperature. In this paper measured EQE for a GaInP/GaInAs/Ge tandem stack has been used to calculate the short-circuit current over a range of operating temperatures. This method can easily be used to conduct system level analysis in any type of solar cell system from flat plate panels to concentrator photovoltaic systems that contain complicated optics.

Keywords

gallium compounds; indium compounds; short-circuit currents; solar cells; solar energy concentrators; GaInP-GaInAs-Ge; concentrator photovoltaic systems; flat plate panels; optical modeling programs; optics cells; solar cell models; system designers; system level analysis; tandem stack; temperature 25 degC; temperature dependent short circuit current; temperature-dependent open-circuit voltage estimation; terrestrial operation; Absorption; Junctions; Photonic band gap; Photonics; Photovoltaic cells; Temperature dependence; Temperature measurement;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2011 37th IEEE

Conference_Location

Seattle, WA

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-9966-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2011.6186123

Filename

6186123