Roadmap towards efficiencies over 40% at ultra-high concentrations (> 1000 suns)

Author

Barrigon, E. ; Rey-Stolle, I. ; García, I. ; Algora, C.

Author_Institution

Inst. de Energia Solar, Univ. Politec. de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

fYear

2011

fDate

19-24 June 2011

Abstract

High efficiency solar cells working under ultra-high concentrations (>;1000X) have been shown to be a promising solution to decrease the cost of PV electricity, increase the efficiency and circumvent the material availability restrictions for massive PV penetration. A detailed analysis of the limitations of our current triple junction solar cell (36.2% at 700X), in the quest to maximize efficiency at 1000X, shows that the main improvements to tackle are: a) implementation of a high band gap tunnel junction; b) increase the band gap of the top cell; c) fine current matching tune; d) enhancement of the front contact process. This constitutes our roadmap to reach an efficiency over 41%.

Keywords

energy gap; photovoltaic power systems; solar cells; PV electricity; current triple junction solar cell; fine current matching tune; front contact; high band gap; high efficiency solar cells; massive PV penetration; tunnel junction; ultra-high concentrations; Junctions; Photonic band gap; Photovoltaic cells; Photovoltaic systems; Resistance; Sun;

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.2011.6186068

Filename

6186068