Lanterna Rally

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1980

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

The analyses of the front metallization design methods and their impacts on solar cell performance, particularly for large area cells, have been continued and completed herein. The influence of line shape on the effective voltage drop, which was treated before for the uniform width lines and the fully tapered lines, has now been generalized to include any taper. The potential merits of an oblique arrangement of the grid lines with respect to the bus lines are investigated. It is found that the arrangement of the grid lines normal to the bus lines gives the best performance. However, the performance penalty for oblique arrangement at relatively small inclination angles against the normal to the bus line is rather small. Also, the ways of optimizing the front metallization pattern, consisting of grid and bus lines, with respect to lowest total performance loss, due both to shading by metal coverage and to voltage drops in the various elements of the current path, was re-investigated. It was determined that it is essential that each level in the hierarchy of conductors have a substantially lower sheet resistance, by at least an order of magnitude, than the preceding level. The findings of these analyses were combined into a set of Design Rules for the front metallization design for large area solar cells. (WHK).