A New Model of Tandem Solar Cells

Abstract

: The goal of this study consists in investigating the shading effect on a novel architecture of PVG (Photovoltaic Generator) introduced in this paper. This architecture is constituting of three PV modules in series connected. Two of them are constituting of amorphous silicon cells in series connected. The third module is constituting of monocrystalline silicon cells in series connected. This architecture is conceived as a PV concentrator where the two amorphous PV Modules are located in the lower position and the third one is located in the focus. The upper module absorbs the solar rays reflected by the two other modules to gain the maximum of solar energy. This architecture is introduced in order to solve problems existing with the tandem solar cell’s architecture proposed in literature. Those problems are the mismatch between cells and both complicated fabrication and costs of tunnel junctions. In this paper, MATLAB/SIMULINK is used for modeling this architecture and studying its characteristics ( I-V and P-V) in case of partial shading. It was found through this study that the maximum power provided by the PV concentrator, is influenced by the partial shading. To solve this partial shading problem, in this work, we make this new architecture as a solar tracker. The implementation of this solar tracker, is performed using arduino card.