Temperature effect on measurements of spectral responsivity of reference solar cell

Abstract

Photovoltaic (PV) cells, or solar cells, take advantage of the photoelectric effect to convert solar energy to electricity. With rapidly increasing of demands of new and green energy, solar energy industry becomes more important in the global economic development. PV cells are the building blocks of all PV systems because they are the devices that convert sunlight to electricity. Characterization and performance testing are critical to the development of existing and emerging photovoltaic technologies and the growth of the solar industry. As new solar products are being developed and manufactured, the energy conversion efficiency and other critical parameters must be accurately measured and tested under globally recognized standard testing conditions which include solar cell temperature, spectral distribution and total irradiance level of solar radiation on the cell to be tested. The aim of this paper is to investigate one of critical parameters - solar cell temperature effect on measurement of spectral responsivity of the cell. When a reference solar cell is illuminated by solar radiation, the cell temperature will vary with different irradiance levels. Consequently it will affect the accurate measurement of spectral responsivity of the cell. In order to better understand the temperature effect on the measurement, temperature coefficients of reference solar cell in spectral range from 300 nm to 1000 nm are measured in temperature range from 25 oC to 35 oC. The measurement uncertainties of temperature coefficient are evaluated and described in this paper according to JCGM 100: 2008 (ISO/IEC Guide 98-3) - Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement. © 2013 SPIE.