Electrical Loss Reduction in Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Module Assembly: A Review

• Published in: Current photovoltaic research Vol. 7; no. 4; pp. 111 - 120
• Main Authors: Chowdhury, Sanchari, Kumar, Mallem, Ju, Minkyu, Kim, Youngkuk, Han, Chang-Soon, Park, Jinshu, Kim, Jaimin, Cho, Young Hyun, Cho, Eun-Chel, Yi, Junsin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Korean
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Solar cells; Solar modules; Mismatch; CTM; Interconnections; Photovoltaics
• ISSN: 2288-3274

The output power of a crystalline silicon (c-Si) photovoltaic (PV) module is not directly the sum of the powers of its unit cells. There are several losses and gain mechanisms that reduce the total output power when solar cells are encapsulated into solar modules. Theses factors are getting high attention as the high cell efficiency achievement become more complex and expensive. More research works are involved to minimize the "cell-to-module" (CTM) loss. Our paper is aimed to focus on electrical losses due to interconnection and mismatch loss at PV modules. Research study shows that among all reasons of PV module failure 40.7% fails at interconnection. The mismatch loss in modern PV modules is very low (nearly 0.1%) but still lacks in the approach that determines all the contributing factors in mismatch loss. This review paper is related to study of interconnection loss technologies and key factors contributing to mismatch loss during module fabrication. Also, the improved interconnection technologies, understanding the approaches to mitigate the mismatch loss factors are precisely described here. This research study will give the approach of mitigating the loss and enable improvement in reliability of PV modules.