Abstract

The “shingled solar cell interconnection concept” for c-Si solar cells has been investigated since more than 26 years [1]. Since 2013, several articles about high voltage module applications have been published with main focus on accelerated aging tests, showing promising results [2-4]. The present work focuses on a theoretical study carried out to carefully determine the cell-to-module losses based on experimentally embedded stripes of commercial c-Si solar cells (originally 6-inch, full square Al-BSF) into a module interconnected by the shingled-cell concept. Results show an acceptable cell-to-module calculation accuracy. The simulated active area efficiency is up to 3%rel higher than for a module made out of traditional front-to-back cell-to-cell interconnection. By splitting a cell in five stripes (S 1/5 concept), the FF improves in average by 2%abs mainly due to lower resistance loss hence lower electrical power loss compared to a module made of 5 busbar solar cells connected by the traditional front-to-back interconnection concept (S 1/5 REF in the article).