oa Engineering of High Performance Solar Cells for Harsh Desert Environment Applications

Two major environmental factors affect drastically the performance of photovoltaic (PV) panels in the Gulf region, namely the dust accumulation (soiling) and the temperature-induced voltage decrease leading to a power loss. During the last years, intensive R&D activity has been conducted both by the industry and academia to address these major issues. However, recent results obtained in laboratory show that the power loss induced by an increase of the temperature of the panel from 200C to 750C can be reduced by 250% in the case of heterojunction silicon cells as compared to conventional homojunction silicon technology. Consequently, the temperature coefficient of the conversion efficiency represents an important figure of merit for the energy yield of a given photovoltaic technology, especially if planned to operate in Gulf region.

In this contribution, we will focus on reviewing current strategies addressing temperature effects on PV panels performance. More specifically, we analyze the dependence of the key characteristics of the solar cells with respect to the temperature and minority carrier injection level, and how various layers making the structure of the device can be engineered in order to maximize the resistance of the cell to temperature degradation.