Cadmium telluride solar cell: From device modeling to system implementation

Abstract

The mathematical modeling of the voltage dependent current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of Cadmium Telluride (CdS/CdTe) Solar cell and utilizing that modeling mathematics in to circuit or industrial level application has been analyzed in this paper. A single cell is developed based on the mathematical model and a solar module/network is constructed considering a series and parallel combinations of the single cell. The I-V characteristics of the cell is used as a source. The module performance is analyzed under various operating conditions. To extract the power from the solar cell, Perturb and Observe (P&O) Maximum power point technique has been used. A general resistive load is used in the circuit presented in the paper. Then instead of simple resistive load, a battery including the charge controller to discharge any load is used in the analysis.