Abstract

This work is related to a study on the fill factor losses for solar cell interconnection by soldered ribbons and how it's affected under high irradiance operation. For photovoltaic solar energy to be able to compete with other electricity sources $/Watt needs to be reduced, directly implying enhancing of efficiency (eta), by decreasing the electrical and optical losses in cell to module process (CTM). For the electrical losses, the fill factor (FF) is affected to decay throughout the module process with an increase of the FF losses regarding to cell's FF, which also increase at irradiance above standard test conditions (STC), easily being reached in desert places where a significant part of the energy is produced with irradiance larger than 1 sun. In order to reveal the relative FF-loss, I-V and EL are measured for seven groups of mc-Si cell modules, soldered and embedded with different types of ribbon. The results show the importance to choose an adequate ribbon for high irradiance operation in order to avoid higher losses of FF. Applying this to a 1 MWp plant preliminary calculations show that the annual energy yield can gain up to 14.57 MWh in San Pedro de Atacama, but the temperature effects must be incorporate in future studies. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.