Malte Brinkmann, F. Haase, K. Bothe, K. Bittkau, A. Lambertz, Weiyuan Duan, K. Ding, Hans-Peter Sperlich, A. Waltinger, H. Schulte‐Huxel
{"title":"Impact of the contacting scheme on I-V measurements of metallization-free silicon heterojunction solar cells","authors":"Malte Brinkmann, F. Haase, K. Bothe, K. Bittkau, A. Lambertz, Weiyuan Duan, K. Ding, Hans-Peter Sperlich, A. Waltinger, H. Schulte‐Huxel","doi":"10.1051/epjpv/2023009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2023009","url":null,"abstract":"I‑V measurements are sensitive to the number and positioning of current and voltage sensing contacts. For busbarless solar cells, measurement setups have been developed using current collection wires and separate voltage sense contacts. Placing the latter at a defined position enables a grid resistance neglecting measurement and thus I‑V characteristics independent from the contacting system. This technique has been developed for solar cells having a finger grid and good conductivity in the direction of the fingers. The optimal position of the sense contact in case of finger-free silicon heterojunction solar cells has not yet been studied. Here, the lateral charge carrier transport occurs in a transparent conductive oxide layer resulting in a higher lateral resistance. We perform finite difference method simulations of HJT solar cells without front metallization to investigate the impact of high lateral resistances on the I-V measurement of solar cells. We show the high sensitivity on the number of used wires for contacting as well as the position of the sense contact for the voltage measurement. Using the simulations, we are able to explain the high difference of up to 7.5% in fill factor measurements of metal free solar cells with varying TCO sheet resistances between two measurement systems using different contacting setups. We propose a method to compensate for the contacting system to achieve a grid-resistance neglecting measurement with both systems allowing a reduction of the FF difference to below 1.5%.","PeriodicalId":42768,"journal":{"name":"EPJ Photovoltaics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57828761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
F. Dhainaut, R. Dabadie, B. Martel, T. Desrues, M. Albaric, O. Palais, S. Dubois, S. Harrison
{"title":"Edge passivation of shingled poly-Si/SiOx passivated contacts solar cells","authors":"F. Dhainaut, R. Dabadie, B. Martel, T. Desrues, M. Albaric, O. Palais, S. Dubois, S. Harrison","doi":"10.1051/epjpv/2023013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2023013","url":null,"abstract":"This work aims at the full recovery of efficiency losses induced by shingling double-side poly-Si/SiOx passivated contacts crystalline silicon solar cells. It focuses on thermally-activated Aluminium Oxide (AlOx) layers elaborated by thermal Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) to passivate the edges of shingled cells cut by using the innovative “45° tilt squaring approach”. The whole procedure featuring high-temperature AlOx annealing led to very low cut-related performance losses. Indeed, the efficiency and FF of the passivated shingled cells surpassed the values obtained for the as-cut shingles by 0.5%abs and 2.6%abs, respectively. Approaches for further improvements are also discussed, particularly to overcome the short-circuit current density decrease observed for passivated shingles.","PeriodicalId":42768,"journal":{"name":"EPJ Photovoltaics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57828863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Peter Brailovsky, Kerstin Baumann, M. Held, A. Briem, K. Wambach, Estelle Gervais, Sina Herceg, Boris Mertvoy, S. Nold, J. Rentsch
{"title":"Insights into circular material and waste flows from c-Si PV industry","authors":"Peter Brailovsky, Kerstin Baumann, M. Held, A. Briem, K. Wambach, Estelle Gervais, Sina Herceg, Boris Mertvoy, S. Nold, J. Rentsch","doi":"10.1051/epjpv/2022029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2022029","url":null,"abstract":"A material flow model for the production of Bifacial Selective Emitter 60-cell p-type Cz PERC (Passivated Emitter and Rear Contacted) glass-backsheet modules with aluminium frame was built. The selected module represents mature technologies in the PV industry and their manufacturing is considered to take place in China in a production cluster with an annual module capacity of 5 GWp. In a first step, data acquisition and validation for wafer, cell and module fabs took place. The data were used to generate the reference system lifecycle inventories (LCI) and extended waste databases for the reference wafers, cells and modules. A set of potential circularity actions, such as the vertical integration of the operations and waste revalorisation strategies, had been proposed and their environmental performance and cost assessed by means of a life cycle assessment (LCA) and a total cost of ownership (TCO). Our results show that 87% of the waste can be reduced and revalorised, this represents a circular flow of raw materials of 18,756 Mg per year from a 5GWp PV module production cluster. Environmental impact reductions of 0.6–2.3% are estimated for different impact categories. We also estimate a cost reduction potential of 2.59% from total module costs.","PeriodicalId":42768,"journal":{"name":"EPJ Photovoltaics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57828170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
C. Schultz, G. F. Farias Basulto, Nicolas Otto, J. Dagar, A. Bartelt, R. Schlatmann, Eva Unger, B. Stegemann
{"title":"Laser-based monolithic series interconnection of two-terminal perovskite-CIGSe tandem solar cells: determination of the optimal scribe line properties","authors":"C. Schultz, G. F. Farias Basulto, Nicolas Otto, J. Dagar, A. Bartelt, R. Schlatmann, Eva Unger, B. Stegemann","doi":"10.1051/epjpv/2023007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2023007","url":null,"abstract":"To achieve a monolithic series interconnection of tandem solar cell devices consisting of a perovskite top cell and a CIGSe bottom cell, a two-terminal interconnection scheme is introduced that includes an additional, fourth patterning step, the so-called iso-cut, which separates the window layer stack between the two solar cells. The implementation of this interconnection scheme requires a process development for a total of four structuring steps, which was achieved by systematically varying the laser parameters. Based on a detailed characterization of the individual scribe line properties with respect to their scribe line depth, morphology, electrical functionality, chemical composition and their influence on adjacent and underlying layers, the optimal patterning parameters and suitable process windows were derived for each step, which is a prerequisite for a loss-free monolithic series interconnection in a tandem module.","PeriodicalId":42768,"journal":{"name":"EPJ Photovoltaics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57828701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How cool is floating PV? A state-of-the-art review of floating PV's potential gain and computational fluid dynamics modeling to find its root cause","authors":"Gofran Chowdhury, M. Haggag, J. Poortmans","doi":"10.1051/epjpv/2023015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2023015","url":null,"abstract":"The noticeable rise in electricity demand, environmental concerns, and the intense land burden has led to installing PV systems on water bodies to create floating photovoltaic (FPV). Of all market niches, FPV is the one developing the fastest. Along with some of its well-documented merits comes a claim that FPV modules operate at a lower temperature than their ground-mounted counterparts (GPVs). This claim is essential due to the performance loss of PV modules at high operating temperatures. Some literature claims that FPVs are so well-cooled that they maintain around 10% higher efficiencies. However, this cooling is poorly quantified, and the root cause remains unclear in the industry. In this paper, an extensive review of all the latest published literature and white paper advertisements was analyzed. The gains in energy yield coming from different root causes range from 0.11% to 31.29%! This proves the point of lack of clarity of potential gain of FPV. The paper then analyses four possible explanations for this cooling effect and its root causes. The FPV performance parameters are isolated and systematically investigated through physics-based finite element modeling. The impacts of wind velocity, wind direction, water temperature, relative humidity, air temperature, proximity to water, tilt angle, and others are evaluated and explained. The outcomes dictate that FPV is cooled largely through wind convection. But the increase in efficiency is below the anticipated values, ranging from 0.5% to 3%.","PeriodicalId":42768,"journal":{"name":"EPJ Photovoltaics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57828882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Power dense thermophotovoltaic cells","authors":"Alexander P. Kirk","doi":"10.1051/epjpv/2023019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2023019","url":null,"abstract":"Class-leading 2-junction (2J) thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells have been developed with thermophotovoltaic efficiency exceeding 40%. However, these devices have sub-optimal power density because the subcell bandgaps are not matched to the emitter spectrum. Although efficiency is important, power density is also an important metric to gauge TPV cell performance; the greater the power density, the less total area of TPV cells that are needed to satisfy a given power generation target. To quantify the relevance of power density, spectrum-matched 1.04/0.78/0.62/0.48/0.36 eV 5-junction (5J) TPV cells have the potential to be 3.5 times more power dense than state-of-the-art, yet spectrum-mismatched, 1.4/1.2 eV 2J TPV cells when irradiated by a 2400 °C emitter. The proposed 5J TPV cells also have the potential to exceed 40% standard power conversion efficiency.","PeriodicalId":42768,"journal":{"name":"EPJ Photovoltaics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135954909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Lehmann, Christian Koessler, Lina Ruiz Gomez, Stijn Scheerlinck
{"title":"Benchmark of eight commercial solutions for deterministic intra-day solar forecast","authors":"J. Lehmann, Christian Koessler, Lina Ruiz Gomez, Stijn Scheerlinck","doi":"10.1051/epjpv/2023006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2023006","url":null,"abstract":"Continuous increase of the production of photovoltaic energy requires precise forecasting to ensure grid stability. This paper presents a detailed benchmark of eight commercial forecasting solutions for intra-day solar forecasts. The comparison was carried out on a period of six months, from November to May 2021, on seven different PV plants located in different countries of the northern hemisphere. Performance evaluation metrics MAE, RMSE and MBE are used in order to analyze the forecasting precision. It is shown that forecasting solar power remains challenging, as shown by the important dispersion between the actors that we have observed.","PeriodicalId":42768,"journal":{"name":"EPJ Photovoltaics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57828686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gerardo Guerra, Pau Mercade-Ruiz, Gaetana Anamiati, Lars Landberg
{"title":"Long-term PV system modelling and degradation using neural networks","authors":"Gerardo Guerra, Pau Mercade-Ruiz, Gaetana Anamiati, Lars Landberg","doi":"10.1051/epjpv/2023018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2023018","url":null,"abstract":"The power production of photovoltaic plants can be affected throughout its operational lifetime by multiple losses and degradation mechanisms. Although long-term degradation has been widely studied, most methodologies assume a specific degradation behaviour and require detailed metadata. This paper presents a methodology for the calculation of long-term degradation of a photovoltaic plant based on neural networks. The goal of the neural network is to model the photovoltaic plant's power production as a function of environmental conditions and time elapsed since the plant started operating. A big advantage of this method with respect to others is that it is completely data-driven, requires no additional information, and makes no assumptions related to degradation behaviour. Results show that the model can derive a long-term degradation trend without overfitting to shorter-term effects or abrupt changes in year-to-year operation.","PeriodicalId":42768,"journal":{"name":"EPJ Photovoltaics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135106966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Soline Boyer-Richard, Fei Fan, Alexandre Beck, Christophe Levallois, Karine Tavernier, Tony Rohel, Rozenn Bernard, Antoine Létoublon, Charles Cornet, Olivier Durand
{"title":"Investigation of III-V GaP solar cell on silicon substrate","authors":"Soline Boyer-Richard, Fei Fan, Alexandre Beck, Christophe Levallois, Karine Tavernier, Tony Rohel, Rozenn Bernard, Antoine Létoublon, Charles Cornet, Olivier Durand","doi":"10.1051/epjpv/2023020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2023020","url":null,"abstract":"The best solar conversion efficiencies have been reached thanks to multijunction solar based on III-V semiconductors on GaAs or Ge substrates. While displaying high conversion efficiencies, these solar cells suffer from the high cost of such substrates. To benefit from both the low cost and technological maturity of silicon cells, III-V tandem cells on silicon seem a good compromise to overpass the theoretical efficiency limit of the Si single cells. To study the GaP/Si interface effect on the solar cell characteristic, a GaP n-i-p solar cell has been grown on silicon substrate. Two types of electrical contacts configurations have been processed: a top-top configuration in which the current does not see the GaP/Si interface and the top-bottom configuration where the electric current crosses the interface. A comparison of dark I-V, I-V under solar illumination, and EQE measurements on both configurations is performed. The top-bottom contacts configuration shows an EQE a little bit lower than the top-top contact one, likely due to lower carrier diffusion length or recombination at the lower interface. However, the result on the EQE of the top-bottom configuration is encouraging for the future development of the GaP-based/Si tandem solar cells, and any other tandem cell on silicon using GaP as an intermediate selective contact.","PeriodicalId":42768,"journal":{"name":"EPJ Photovoltaics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135448188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Leslie Kurumundayil, K. Ramspeck, S. Rein, M. Demant
{"title":"Every cell needs a beautiful image: on-the-fly contacting measurements for high-throughput production","authors":"Leslie Kurumundayil, K. Ramspeck, S. Rein, M. Demant","doi":"10.1051/epjpv/2022033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2022033","url":null,"abstract":"The future of the energy transition will lead to a terrawatt-scale photovoltaic market, which can be served cost-effectively primarily by means of high-throughput production of solar cells. In addition to high-throughput production, characterization must be adapted to highest cycle times. Therefore, we present an innovative approach to detect image defects in solar cells using on-the-fly electroluminescence measurements. When a solar cell passes a standard current–voltage (I–V) unit, the cell is stopped, contacted, measured, released, and afterwards again accelerated. In contrast to this, contacting and measuring the sample on-the-fly saves a lot of time. Yet, the resulting images are blurred due to high-speed motion. For the development of such an on-the-fly contact measurement tool, a deblurring method is developed in this work. Our deep-learning-based deblurring model enables to present a clean EL image of the solar cell to the human operator and allows for a proper defect detection, reaching a correlation coefficient of 0.84.","PeriodicalId":42768,"journal":{"name":"EPJ Photovoltaics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57828445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}