An Investigation of Temperature Effects on Solar Photovoltaic Cells and Modules

The solar photovoltaic (PV) systems are facing serious problems due to unavoidable losses in their system, leads to more deviation of output power from the input power level. This effect is known as a mismatch effect and is available in PV systems. Many losses are encountered in PV system and it is difficult to minimize such losses. In this paper, the influence of thermal effect on the solar PV system is considered and its influence on the performance of the operation, fill factor, open circuit voltage, and short circuit current, band gap level of various semiconductor materials, output power and efficiency are analyzed. The temperature effect of a solar PV cell, while connecting in a 36 cells in a module is analyzed for the various connection configurations like Simple Series configuration (SS), Series- Parallel configuration (SP), Total-Cross Tied configuration (TCT), Bridge-Linked configuration (BL), and Honey Comb configuration (HC) using MATLAB software. An increase in the level of temperature for various connection configurations, correspondingly decreases their open circuit voltage and series resistance. Shunt resistance and current are may not fully affected due to temperature. Finally, this problem creates a heating effect in the solar PV cell, so the life span of the photovoltaic panel is decreased gradually. While the temperature level increases, soldering points are affected and cell encapsulation is affects. Solar cell materials are changed their performance of operation, while there is a change in the band gap due to the effect of temperature.