SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC FUNDAMENTALS

AND APPLICATIONS
Essential Basics of Solar Cell







K.S.Vignesh
EEE-B
Solar cell


A solar cell (also called a photovoltaic cell) is an electrical device that converts the
energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect. It is a form ofphotoelectric
cell, defined as a device whose electrical characteristicse.g. current, voltage, or
resistancevary when exposed to light. A solar cell is an electronic device which directly
converts sunlight into electricity. Light shining on the solar cell produces both a current and a
voltage to generate electric power. This process requires firstly, a material in which the
absorption of light raises an electron to a higher energy state, and secondly, the movement
of this higher energy electron from the solar cell into an external circuit. The electron then
dissipates its energy in the external circuit and returns to the solar cell. A variety of materials
and processes can potentially satisfy the requirements for photovoltaic energy conversion,
but in practice nearly all photovoltaic energy conversion uses semiconductor materials in the
form of a p-n junction.
The basic steps in the operation of a
solar cell are:
the generation of light-generated
carriers;
the collection of the light-generated
carries to generate a current;
the generation of a large voltage
across the solar cell; and
the dissipation of power in the load
and in parasitic resistances.

Photovoltaic Cells: Converting
Photons to Electrons
The solar cells that you see on
calculators and satellites are also called photovoltaic (PV) cells, which as the name implies
(photo meaning "light" and voltaic meaning "electricity"), convert sunlight directly into
electricity. A module is a group of cells connected electrically and packaged into a frame
(more commonly known as a solar panel), which can then be grouped into larger solar
arrays, like the one operating at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
Photovoltaic cells are made of special materials called semiconductors such as
silicon, which is currently used most commonly. Basically, when light strikes the cell, a
certain portion of it is absorbed within the semiconductor material. This means that the
energy of the absorbed light is transferred to the semiconductor. The energy knocks
electrons loose, allowing them to flow freely.
PV cells also all have one or more electric field that acts to force electrons freed by
light absorption to flow in a certain direction. This flow of electrons is a current, and by
placing metal contacts on the top and bottom of the PV cell, we can draw that current off for
external use, say, to power a calculator. This current, together with the cell's voltage (which
is a result of its built-in electric field or fields), defines the power (or wattage) that the solar
cell can produce.

How Silicon Makes a Solar Cell
Silicon has some special chemical properties, especially in its crystalline form.
An atom of silicon has 14 electrons, arranged in three different shells. The first two shells --
which hold two and eight electrons respectively -- are completely full. The outer shell,
however, is only half full with just four electrons. A silicon atom will always look for ways to
fill up its last shell, and to do this, it will share electrons with four nearby atoms. It's like each
atom holds hands with its neighbours, except that in this case, each atom has four hands
joined to four neighbours. That's what forms the crystalline structure, and that structure turns
out to be important to this type of PV cell.
The only problem is that pure crystalline silicon is a poor conductor of electricity
because none of its electrons are free to move about, unlike the electrons in more optimum
conductors like copper. To address this issue, the silicon in a solar cell has impurities --
other atoms purposefully mixed in with the silicon atoms -- which changes the way things
work a bit. We usually think of impurities as something undesirable, but in this case, our cell
wouldn't work without them. Consider silicon with an atom of phosphorous here and there,
maybe one for every million silicon atoms. Phosphorous has five electrons in its outer shell,
not four. It still bonds with its silicon neighbour atoms, but in a sense, the phosphorous has
one electron that doesn't have anyone to hold hands with. It doesn't form part of a bond, but
there is a positive proton in the phosphorous nucleus holding it in place.
When energy is added to pure silicon, in the form of heat for example, it can cause a
few electrons to break free of their bonds and leave their atoms. A hole is left behind in each
case. These electrons, called free carriers, then wander randomly around the crystalline
lattice looking for another hole to fall into and carrying an electrical current. However, there
are so few of them in pure silicon, that they aren't very useful.
But our impure silicon with phosphorous atoms mixed in is a different story. It takes a
lot less energy to knock loose one of our "extra" phosphorous electrons because they aren't
tied up in a bond with any neighbouring atoms. As a result, most of these electrons do break
free, and we have a lot more free carriers than we would have in pure silicon. The process of
adding impurities on purpose is called doping, and when doped with phosphorous, the
resulting silicon is called N-type ("n" for negative) because of the prevalence of free
electrons. N-type doped silicon is a much better conductor than pure silicon.
The other part of a typical solar cell is doped with the element boron, which has only
three electrons in its outer shell instead of four, to become P-type silicon. Instead of having
free electrons, P-type ("p" for positive) has free openings and carries the opposite (positive)
charge.

Anatomy of a Solar Cell
Before now, our two separate pieces of silicon were electrically neutral; the
interesting part begins when you put them together. That's because without an electric field,
the cell wouldn't work; the field forms when the N-type and P-type silicon come into contact.
Suddenly, the free electrons on the N side see all the openings on the P side, and there's a
mad rush to fill them. Do all the free electrons fill all the free holes? No. If they did, then the
whole arrangement wouldn't be very useful. However, right at the junction, they do mix and
form something of a barrier, making it harder and harder for electrons on the N side to cross
over to the P side. Eventually, equilibrium is reached, and we have an electric field
separating the two sides.
This electric field acts as a diode, allowing (and even pushing) electrons to flow from
the P side to the N side, but not the other way around. It's like a hill -- electrons can easily go
down the hill (to the N side), but can't climb it (to the P side).
When light, in the form of photons, hits our solar cell, its energy breaks apart
electron-hole pairs. Each photon with enough energy will normally free exactly one electron,
resulting in a free hole as well. If this happens close enough to the electric field, or if free
electron and free hole happen to wander into its range of influence, the field will send the
electron to the N side and the hole to the P side. This causes further disruption of electrical
neutrality, and if we provide an external current path, electrons will flow through the path to
the P side to unite with holes that the electric field sent there, doing work for us along the
way. The electron flow provides the current, and the cell's electric field causes a voltage.
With both current and voltage, we have power, which is the product of the two.
There are a few more components left before we can really use our cell. Silicon
happens to be a very shiny material, which can send photons bouncing away before they've
done their job, so an antireflective coating is applied to reduce those losses. The final step is
to install something that will protect the cell from the elements -- often a glass cover plate.
PV modules are generally made by connecting several individual cells together to achieve
useful levels of voltage and current, and putting them in a sturdy frame complete with
positive and negative terminals.
Design Characteristics

1. Theory of I-V Characterization
PV cells can be modeled as a current source in parallel with a diode. When there is no light
present to generate any current, the PV cell behaves like a diode. As the intensity of
incident light increases, current is generated by the PV cell, as illustrated in Figure 1.

I-V Curve of PV Cell and Associated Electrical Diagram
In an ideal cell, the total current I is equal to the current I

generated by the photoelectric

effect minus the diode current I
D
, according to the equation:

where I
0
is the saturation current of the diode, q is the
elementary charge 1.6x10
-19
Coulombs, k is a constant
of value 1.38x10
-23
J/K, T is the cell temperature in
Kelvin, and V is the measured cell voltage that is either
produced (power quadrant) or applied (voltage
bias). A more accurate model will include two diode
terms, however, we will concentrate on a single diode
model in this document.
Expanding the equation gives the simplified circuit model shown below and the following
associated equation, where n is the diode ideality factor (typically between 1 and 2),
and R
S
and R
SH
represents the series and shunt resistances that are described in further
detail later in this document:


Simplified Equivalent Circuit Model for a Photovoltaic Cell
The I-V curve of an illuminated PV cell has the shape shown in Figure as the voltage across
the measuring load is swept from zero to V
OC
, and many performance parameters for the cell
can be determined from this data, as described in the sections below.

Illuminated I-V Sweep Curve
Short Circuit Current (I
SC
)
The short circuit current I
SC
corresponds to the short circuit condition when the impedance is
low and is calculated when the voltage equals 0.
I (at V=0) = I
SC



I
SC
occurs at the beginning of the forward-bias sweep and is the maximum current value in
the power quadrant. For an ideal cell, this maximum current value is the total current
produced in the solar cell by photon excitation.
I
SC
= I
MAX
= I

for forward-bias power quadrant

Open Circuit Voltage (V
OC
)
The open circuit voltage (V
OC
) occurs when there is no current passing through the cell.
V (at I=0) = V
OC

V
OC
is also the maximum voltage difference across the cell for a forward-bias sweep in the
power quadrant.
V
OC
= V
MAX
for forward-bias power quadrant
Maximum Power (P
MAX
), Current at P
MAX
(I
MP
), Voltage at P
MAX
(V
MP
)
The power produced by the cell in Watts can be easily calculated along the I-V sweep by the
equation P=IV. At the I
SC
and V
OC
points, the power will be zero and the maximum value for
power will occur between the two. The voltage and current at this maximum power point are
denoted as V
MP
and I
MP
respectively.

Maximum Power for an I-V Sweep
Fill Factor (FF)
The Fill Factor (FF) is essentially a measure of quality of the solar cell. It is calculated by
comparing the maximum power to the theoretical power (P
T
) that would be output at both the
open circuit voltage and short circuit current together. FF can also be interpreted graphically
as the ratio of the rectangular areas depicted in Figure.

Getting the Fill Factor From the I-V Sweep
A larger fill factor is desirable, and corresponds to an I-V sweep that is more square-like.
Typical fill factors range from 0.5 to 0.82. Fill factor is also often represented as a
percentage.
Efficiency ()
Efficiency is the ratio of the electrical power output P
out
, compared to the solar power
input, P
in
, into the PV cell. P
out
can be taken to be P
MAX
since the solar cell can be operated
up to its maximum power output to get the maximum efficiency.

P
in
is taken as the product of the irradiance of the incident light, measured in W/m
2
or in suns
(1000 W/m
2
), with the surface area of the solar cell [m
2
]. The maximum efficiency (
MAX
)
found from a light test is not only an indication of the performance of the device under test,
but, like all of the I-V parameters, can also be affected by ambient conditions such as
temperature and the intensity and spectrum of the incident light. For this reason, it is
recommended to test and compare PV cells using similar lighting and temperature
conditions. These standard test conditions are discussed in Part III.
Shunt Resistance (R
SH
) and Series Resistance (R
S
)
During operation, the efficiency of solar cells is reduced by the dissipation of power across
internal resistances. These parasitic resistances can be modelled as a parallel shunt
resistance (R
SH
) and series resistance (R
S
), as depicted in Figure .
For an ideal cell, R
SH
would be infinite and would not provide an alternate path for current to
flow, while R
S
would be zero, resulting in no further voltage drop before the load.
Decreasing R
SH
and increasing R
s
will decrease the fill factor (FF) and P
MAX
as shown in
Figure If R
SH
is decreased too much, V
OC
will drop, while increasing R
S
excessively can
cause I
SC
to drop instead.

Figure 6 - Effect of Diverging R
s
& R
SH
From Ideality
It is possible to approximate the series and shunt resistances, R
S
and R
SH
, from the slopes
of the I-V curve at V
OC
and I
SC
, respectively. The resistance at Voc, however, is at best
proportional to the series resistance but it is larger than the series resistance. R
SH
is
represented by the slope at I
SC
. Typically, the resistances at I
SC
and at V
OC
will be measured
and noted, as shown in Figure

Obtaining Resistances from the I-V Curve
If incident light is prevented from exciting the solar cell, the I-V curve shown in Figure can be
obtained. This I-V curve is simply a reflection of the No Light curve from Figure about the
V-axis. The slope of the linear region of the curve in the third quadrant (reverse-bias) is a
continuation of the linear region in the first quadrant, which is the same linear region used to
calculate R
SH
in Figure. It follows that R
SH
can be derived from the I-V plot obtained with or
without providing light excitation, even when power is sourced to the cell. It is important to
note, however, that for real cells, these resistances are often a function of the light level, and
can differ in value between the light and dark tests.

I-V Curve of Solar Cell Without Light Excitation
Temperature Measurement Considerations
The crystals used to make PV cells, like all semiconductors, are sensitive to temperature.
Figure depicts the effect of temperature on an I-V curve. When a PV cell is exposed to
higher temperatures, I
SC
increases slightly, while V
OC
decreases more significantly.

Temperature Effect on I-V Curve
For a specified set of ambient conditions, higher temperatures result in a decrease in the
maximum power output P
MAX
. Since the I-V curve will vary according to temperature, it is
beneficial to record the conditions under which the I-V sweep was conducted. Temperature
can be measured using sensors such as RTDs, thermistors or thermocouples.
I-V Curves for Modules
For a module or array of PV cells, the shape of the I-V curve does not change. However, it is
scaled based on the number of cells connected in series and in parallel. When n is the
number of cells connected in series and m is the number of cells connected in parallel
and I
SC
and V
OC
are values for individual cells, the I-V curve shown in Figure is produced.

I-V Curve for Modules and Arrays