Cell-to-Module Simulation Analysis for Optimizing the Efficiency and Power of the Photovoltaic Module

Abstract

A 60-cell photovoltaic (PV) module was analyzed by optimizing the interconnection parameters of the solar cells to enhance the efficiency and increase the power of the PV module setup. The cell-to-module (CTM) losses and gains varied substantially during the various simulation iterations. Optimization was performed to inspect and augment the gain and loss parameters for the 60-cell PV module. The power and efficiency of the module were improved by refining several parameters, such as number of busbars, size of the contact pads, interconnected ribbon width, thickness of the core, and distance between the solar cells and strings, to obtain the maximum efficiency of 21.09%; the CTM efficiency achieved was 94.19% for the proposed strategy related to the common interconnection setup of the ribbon-based system. The CTM efficiency was improved by optimizing the geometrical, optical, and electrical parameters precisely, the power enhancement was up to 325.3 W, and a CTM power of 99.1% was achieved from a standard PV module with rectangular ribbon interconnections.

Keywords

• cell-to-module (CTM)
• cell interconnection
• power and efficiency analysis
• busbars
• connecting pads
• module margin