Published June 2018
| public
Book Section - Chapter
Light Trapping in Bifacial Solar Modules Using Effectively Transparent Contacts (ETCs)
Chicago
An error occurred while generating the citation.
Abstract
We have performed a computational study on the enhancement of the light absorption within bifacial solar modules with effectively transparent contacts (ETCs). ETCs are triangular cross-section silver fingers that redirect light to the active area of the solar cell and therefore, mitigate finger grid shading losses. Furthermore, ETCs can be spaced densely leading to light trapping. We used a combination of thin film and ray optical simulations and determined that light absorption can be increased by more than 4.5% compared to state-of-the-art metallization due to light trapping and effective transparency. Furthermore, we calculated that grid resistance and silver usage can be improved when using ETCs.
Additional Information
© 2018 IEEE. The authors thank John Lloyd for helpful advice on LightTools optical simulations and Phil Jahelka for helpful discussion. This material is based upon work supported by the Engineering Research Center Program of the National Science Foundation and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy of the Department of Energy under NSF Cooperative Agreement No. EEC-1041895 and by the U.S. Department of Energy through the Bay Area Photovoltaic Consortium under Award Number DE-EE0004946. RS acknowledges support from the Global Climate & Energy project.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 91653
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20181210-140401678
- NSF
- EEC-1041895
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-EE0004946
- Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP)
- Created
-
2018-12-10Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field