Performance analysis of CuInSe2 and GaAs solar cells aboard the LIPS-III flight Boeing lightweight panel

I-V curve analysis was performed on monolithically series connected CIS cell strings and GaAs solar cells mounted on the Boeing lightweight panel aboard the NRL LIPS-III satellite flight experiment. The analysis was performed on data from three different CIS solar cell strings. Voc, Isc, FF, and Pmax values obtained using several methods are discussed and temperature coefficients (TC) values for each are calculated from the on-orbit I-V data. Conclusions pertaining to the relative degradation values for each cell type are presented. The CIS solar cell string with no cover glass shows the least degradation with <2.0% loss of power per year in orbit