Radiative sky cooling of solar cells: towards a fully coupled opto-electro-thermal model of silicon solar cells for accurate performance evaluation in real operating conditions

Jérémy Dumoulin; Emmanuel Drouard; Mohamed Amara

doi:10.1117/12.2609531

1 April 2022 Radiative sky cooling of solar cells: towards a fully coupled opto-electro-thermal model of silicon solar cells for accurate performance evaluation in real operating conditions

Jérémy Dumoulin, Emmanuel Drouard, Mohamed Amara

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume PC11996, Physics, Simulation, and Photonic Engineering of Photovoltaic Devices XI; PC119960A (2022) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2609531
Event: SPIE OPTO, 2022, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Photovoltaic (PV) solar cells are designed to efficiently absorb solar photons but convert only a limited proportion of them into electricity. The remaining energy is converted into heat, which in turn, heats the entire solar modules up to 50-60 °C under real operating conditions. This is detrimental to both their power conversion efficiency and lifetime. Recently, there has been a growing interest in the so-called radiative sky cooling (RSC) strategy. This approach consists in optimizing the thermal radiation of cells or modules - with the help of photonic structures - by taking advantage of the atmospheric transparency in the 8-13 μm range. Although some basic studies predict cooling of more than 10°C on silicon devices, they remain insufficient to assess the potential of this technique for various PV technologies directly from their material properties. Using COMSOL Multiphysics, we are working on a fully coupled model of silicon solar cells in order to predict their opto-electro-thermal behaviour from the bottom-up (i.e. using only material properties as an input). This enables us to study various photonic pathways for enhanced radiative sky cooling. Our work also shows the importance of moving towards fully coupled models to accurately predict the temperature and electrical output under real conditions.

Conference Presentation

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Jérémy Dumoulin, Emmanuel Drouard, and Mohamed Amara "Radiative sky cooling of solar cells: towards a fully coupled opto-electro-thermal model of silicon solar cells for accurate performance evaluation in real operating conditions", Proc. SPIE PC11996, Physics, Simulation, and Photonic Engineering of Photovoltaic Devices XI, PC119960A (1 April 2022); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2609531

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KEYWORDS

Solar cells

Silicon solar cells

Performance modeling

Solar energy

Photovoltaics

Applied physics

Photons

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