Design, fabrication, and measurement of a polymer-based anti-reflection coating for improved performance of a solar panel under a specific incident angle

Solar panels are usually covered with anti-reflection coatings (ARCs) that operate optimally for normal light incidence. Thus, ARCs effectiveness declines with increasing incident angles. In this contribution, we propose and design a polymer-based ARC that can be customized to operate optimally unde...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSolar energy materials and solar cells Vol. 189; pp. 175 - 180
Main Authors Jalaly, S., Vahdani, M., Shahabadi, M., Mohamad Sadeghi, G. Mir
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.01.2019
Elsevier BV
Subjects
Anti-reflection coating
Antireflection coatings
Coatings
Energy efficiency
Fabrication
Measurement
Photovoltaic cells
Photovoltaics
Polyurethane
Polyurethane resins
Ray-tracing
Solar cells
Solar energy
Solar panel
Solar panels
Transmission pattern
Anti-reflection coating
Transmission pattern
Ray-tracing
Solar panel
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Summary:Solar panels are usually covered with anti-reflection coatings (ARCs) that operate optimally for normal light incidence. Thus, ARCs effectiveness declines with increasing incident angles. In this contribution, we propose and design a polymer-based ARC that can be customized to operate optimally under a specific incident angle. It finds its application in building-applied photovoltaic (BAPV) and building-integrated PV (BIPV) systems where solar panels are installed on various building facets at arbitrary angles. A sample of the designed coating is fabricated using Polyurethane (PU) as a transparent polymer in a low-cost process. Our experiments show a 5.6% enhancement in the real outdoor conversion efficiency of a glass-covered Si solar cell equipped with the designed ARC under the targeted incident angle, wherein it is compared with a case in which our designed ARC is substituted by a plain PU-based sheet ARC of an equal thickness. •A polymer-based anti-reflection coating (ARC) for solar panels is designed.•It can be customized to operate optimally under a specific incident angle.•It finds its application in building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems.•A sample of the designed ARCs is fabricated using Polyurethane in a low-cost way.•Performance of the fabricated ARC was verified under outdoor testing conditions.
ISSN:0927-0248
1879-3398
DOI:10.1016/j.solmat.2018.10.001