A research team from the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) in South Korea is tackling the use of solar PV in less than ideal conditions with a new tool to optimize for diffused light and partial shade in the city and indoors. The team also developed three-dimensional solar panels with a glass-free, lightweight design with self-tracking that reportedly produce 60% more power compared to conventional flat modules.
A research team from the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) addresses the use of PV in non-ideal conditions by developing a tool to optimize for diffuse light and partial shade in urban and indoor environments, as an alternative to lighting condition-based tools in standard testing.
Seungil Cha, a KERI research leader, shared pv magazine that the team wondered whether or not conventional PV modules optimized for utility-scale conditions could address the diffuse light in typical residential and urban environments. “The attempt to answer this question is the motivation of our research,” Cha said, referring to the group’s latest research that resulted in a new semi-analytical tool to inform the design of indoor and outdoor solar energy in the city. optimization based on diffuse light analysis and an improved understanding of the effects of the angle of incidence (AOI).
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It was surprising to see how much lighting conditions for PV operation in urban environments differ from those for installations in rural conditions or the so-called Standard Testing Condition (STC), said Cha.
The next surprising aspect was “the simplicity” of the solution, which involves the development of a new, three-dimensional PV module design that not only connects cut solar cells together, but also with a stretchable polymer construction with a honeycomb-like structure. structure. It is a glass-free, lightweight design with self-tracking that is said to produce 60% more power compared to conventional flat modules.
The team’s latest research in this area is a tool that “predicts current density based on the spectrum of incident light”, the external quantum efficiency (EQE) of a solar cell according to the AOI, and information about the environment.
It is detailed in: “Electric current from shade and indoors: solar cells under diffuse lighting conditions”, which was published in Sustainable energy fuels. It was a collaboration between KERI and the South Korean University of Science and Technology.
“Using a physical model and assuming that the diffuse light can be treated as a sum of normal distribution functions, we show that each of these represents a diffuse light source by scattering or reflection,” the research team said.
The constructed model was applied to solar photovoltaics deployed in urban environments and indoor applications. For urban environments, it enables calculations that take into account reflections from surrounding objects and the scattering of light by dust or other large molecules in the atmosphere. It also introduces “the ability to improve energy yield through approaches ranging from cell-level control to manipulating the orientation of solar panels” in the shaded areas.
For indoor applications, it allows the study of a range of lighting arrays, types of lamps and locations to derive the optimal conditions. “Additionally, the results indicate that mismatch losses are possible for indoor modules due to the geometry of the solar cell module and the lighting,” the team said.
Concluding that the tool could be used to optimize the design of indoor solar cells, the researchers claimed: “Despite some limitations, including the use of a two-dimensional model, a limited number of examples presented and a possible oversimplification, the proposed The model can provide a useful analytical protocol for designing solar photovoltaics suitable for use in practical locations where, unlike below the STC, diffuse light is abundant,” the report said.
The group’s ongoing research into high-tolerance, partial-shade, high-voltage PV has been documented in several recent papers. For example, the article ‘Small area high voltage photovoltaic module for high tolerance to partial shading’ was published in iScience and reported by pv magazine last year. Another paper, “Automated, shape-transformable, self-solar tracking, mosaic crystalline Si solar cells using in-situ shape memory alloy actuation,” was published in scientific reportsand also reported by pv magazine.
Other papers include “Origami foldable crystalline-Si solar cell module with mosaic and stretchable connections based on metal textile,” in Solar energy materials and solar cellsAnd “Reliable Lego® style assembled stretchable photovoltaic module for three-dimensional curved surface application,” published in Applied energy.
Cha said the group is conducting further research in three related areas. It is developing an “integrated module structure with effective cooling.” It develops new module structures that can be applied to vehicle integrated PV (VIPV). And the third area is indoor PV. The team already has a working sensor assembly, with a sensor, a low-power Bluetooth module powered by an indoor PV module, and a battery-free edge device.
Cha sees the technologies in the lab being commercialized in the coming years, saying the lab designs are akin to a “concept car” that precedes commercial versions. The basic design concepts and principles, such as the mosaic PV tile concept or the high-voltage small area concepts, can ultimately be incorporated into the next generation of commercialized building-integrated PV or VIPV products, even if they are not exactly the same as the research results. modules.
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