ELECTRON Department of ECE, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore

Computational Study Of The Effect Of Temperature On Efficiency Of Photovoltiac Cell

Prem Kumar. P*, Sathish Kumar. M,* Krishnan Namboori. P.K,**
*Department of Mechanical Engineering **Computational Engineering and Networking School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University, Ettimadai, Coimbatore-641105, INDIA
premkumar_88_ase@yahoo.co.in

ABSTRACT

Recently, there has been an enormous increase in the understanding of the operational principle of photovoltaic devices, which led to a rapid increase in the power conversion efficiencies of such devices. However, there has been an active search for the designing of costeffective and efficient photovoltaic appliances. Solar photovoltaic devices are made of various semi-conductor materials including silicon, cadmium sulfide, cadmium telluride, and gallium arsenide, and in single crystalline, multi-crystalline, or amorphous forms. Copper Indium Gallium di Selenide (CIGS) photovoltaic cells keep excellent and unique features like high energy conversion efficiency, long life time, high resistance to radiations and so on. One of the technical issues remaining to be solved for improvement of the performance of flexible CIGS photovoltaic cells is the effect of change of temperature on efficiency of the device. An experimental method to make an analysis in this regard is highly expensive and time consuming. In this paper we have designed and worked out a computational method to make the study in an efficient manner. The design is based on Computational techniques like solving of Poisons equation coupled with hole and electron continuity equations in one spatial dimension in the given Conference Proceedings RTCSP09

compositionally non-uniform semiconductor. From the above work it has been found that as the temperature increases the conversion efficiency of the cell decreases. The cell is found to be having the highest efficiency at two temperatures 13oC and 15oC.
1. INTRODUCTION Energy crisis is one of the major threats faced by the present world and the need of the hour is an energy efficient cost effective solution. Solar energy is the most important alternative energy resource available to us. If we could convert this energy into electricity efficiently, we could overcome the problem of energy crisis. The primary energy requirement of the world could be met with easily if photovoltaic cells, which are having more than 15% efficiency, would be properly explored [1]. Moreover photovoltaic cells do not generate any green house gases and hence they are perfectly eco-friendly. A photovoltaic cell is a device where potential is built in by collecting electron and releasing holes in return. This process is contingent on the bandgap or energetic separation of the conduction and valence bands. If the quantum energy of the light is exceeding the bandgap then that quantum will be absorbed leading into formulation of electrons and holes. The electrons move along the conduction band edge, while the holes progress along the valence band edge [2] leading into of an electrical current. Although, the efficiency of some of these advanced photovoltaic cells is high, the efficiency varies with temperature. This variation of efficiency with temperature is a matter of great concern as the

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cells are widely used in hot climates. Current photovoltaic cells are made of silicon or other combination of semiconductor materials. In this work, we have used Copper Indium Gallium di Selenide (CIGS), a polycrystalline thin film photovoltaic cell that is a realistic option to achieve the goal of low cost, high efficiency power conservation from non renewable sources. CIGS is a semiconductor material composed of Copper, Indium, Gallium and Selenium which together turns to be a complex hetero-junction system. Most of the experimental studies on photovoltaic cells are conducted under an artificial environment like light bulbs to produce a constant level of lighting which leads to sometimes even contrasting results while applying under the natural environment [3]. The angle at which light falls on the photovoltaic cell plays a vital role, which when changed during the experiment adds on one more variable. Moreover, variables like the distance between light source and cell, position of thermometers etc. have to be considered for the correlation studies, where an experimental technique will be highly inadequate. Therefore, the effect of temperature on photovoltaic conversion efficiency has been studied by computational techniques. 2. PRINCIPLE The quantity of current produced in the photovoltaic cell can be found using Shockleys equation [4] for a current running through a diode ( Equation 1).

From the Equation 2, the exponential variation of current with respect to temperature can be explained. Open circuit voltage (Voc) is the voltage obtained from photovoltaic cell when the load resistance is very high and the expression for the open circuit voltage (Voc) is given by,

Voc =

kT
q

ln(1 +

IL ) Io

(3)

Short circuit current (Isc) is the current obtained from the photovoltaic cell when the load resistance is very low, the expression for the short circuit current (Isc) is given by, Isc=IL (4) The power of a photovoltaic cell can be described as the product of the current and the potential energy difference (Equation 5). P=IV (5) where I is expressed in amps and V is in volts. Hence, power P is expressed as:
qV

P = I oV (1 e

kT

) + I LV

(6)

The voltage at which one gets the maximum power (mean power) from the photovoltaic cell is the maximum power point voltage (Vmax). An expression for Vmax can be found by setting the first derivative of the above power function to zero (i.e.

dP = 0 ). The dV

I = I 0 (1 e

qV kT

(1)

where I is the current, Io is the diode reverse saturation current, q is the magnitude of charge (1.602 1019C), V is the potential across the diode, is a small fudge factor absent in ideal diodes but included here to account for real diodes (value between 2-3), k is Boltzmanns constant k = 1.381023J/K and T is the temperature in K units. When the independent light generated current (IL) is tacked on to this expression, we have:

maximum power point current can be found by simply plugging into the value of Vmax into the original expression for the current (I) produced by the photovoltaic cell. Hence the expression for Vmax takes the form of:
max qVmax IL kT (1 + ) = ( + 1)e Io kT

qV

(7)

The light conversion efficiency () of the cell is given by Equation 8.

I = I 0 (1 e

qV kT

I maxVmax Pin

(8)

) + IL

(2)

where Pin is the Input power.

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55oC. The I-V characteristic curve for CIGS cell at 25oC is given in Figure no: 4.1.

Figure: 4.1 Power Curve for CIGS cell at 25oC with max point 3. COMPUTATIONAL DETAILS Computational studies have been conducted on CIGS cell to identify the effect of temperature on photovoltaic efficiency. Computational techniques like solving of poisons equation coupled with hole and electron continuity equations in one spatial dimension in compositionally nonuniform semiconductors have been used in this study [5]. The cell has been designed as a three layer device with CdS as the first layer, CuInGaSe2 as the second layer and CuInSe2 as the third layer. The variables such as thickness of layer, band gap, dielectric constant, index of refraction, number of holes and electron mobility for each layer has been considered while doing the simulation. For this work, we have used ADEPT tool of nanoHUB for the required modeling simulation [6]. Details like carrier Density, charge Density, electric field, carrier velocity and I-V Characteristics have been generated out of the simulation results. The I-V characteristics curve obtained from the simulation is used to generate the maximum power point. The input power remains the same for various temperatures and therefore efficiency is directly proportional to the maximum power. Hence, the effect of variation of temperature on maximum power has been studied. Figure: 4.2 Power Curve for CIGS cell at 25oC The area of the above power curve (Figure no: 4.2) gives the power generated in the photovoltaic cell at a particular temperature. On plotting the Power vs. Temperature, it is seen that there is a decrease in Power with increase in temperature. It can be clearly seen from the graph below (Figure no: 4.3).

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The I-V characteristic is obtained for CIGS cell at various temperatures ranging from 5oC to

Figure: 4.3 Variation of power with temperature Maximum power is obtained by finding the maximum area of the rectangle that can be inscribed into the power curve. On plotting Maximum power vs. temperature it is seen that a peak occurs at the temperature of 13o C and 15o C. The variation of maximum power is almost linear up to 25oC and there after it starts decreasing.

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6. http://www.nanohub.org 7. Photovoltaic Panel Simulation Guide14 August 1998. 3-11-06

User's

Figure: 4.3 Variation of maximum power with temperature The decrease in efficiency due to an increased ambient temperature is due to the presence of semiconductor material which acts like an insulator in lower temperatures and a conductor at high temperature [7].

5. CONCLUSIONS

The present work clearly indicates a decrease in the conversion efficiency of the CIGS along with increase in temperature after 25oC, which is going to be the turning point. The cell has the highest efficiency at two temperatures 13oC and 15oC which are the optimum temperatures for maximum efficiency. Practically it would have been very difficult to vary the temperature alone but through computational technique it is made possible.
6. REFERENCES 1. Richard Corkish, Encyclopedia of energySolar Cells, Elsevier Publications. 2. Bolko Von Roedern, Encyclopedia of energy- Physics of Photovoltaics, Elsevier Publications. 3. Ryan Frederick and Forest Hayes, The Impact of Ambient Temperature on the Efficiency of Photovoltaic Cells. 4. Nanomaterial Photovoltaics,2007. 5. J. L. Gray; Michael McLennan (2007), "Adept," DOI: 10254/nanohub-r2658.2.

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