Thermal non-uniformities in concentrator solar cells

✍ Scribed by R.K. Mathur; D.R. Mehrotra; S. Mittal; S.R. Dhariwal

• Book ID: 103901523
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1984
• Weight: 584 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0379-6787
• DOI: 10.1016/0379-6787(84)90025-5

✦ Synopsis

The temperature distribution on the surface of a solar cell and along a heat sink is obtained for various cases of practical interest in photovoltaic energy conversion using concentrators. It is shown that (i) the temperature distribution of the junction follows the temperature distribution of the sink at the bottom of the cell closely and therefore all the electrical properties must be related to this temperature, (ii) even if the solar cell is uniformly illuminated a temperature gradient may exist along its diameter because of the properties of the heat sink and (iii) if the illuminated area is reduced the temperature gradient increases. The degradations in the open-circuit voltage and conversion efficiency and the improvement in the short-circuit current of a conventional silicon solar cell due to thermal non-uniformities are calculated.