This paper takes into account a hybrid power system consisting of solar and wind units. Both units are connected to the utility grid. The paper concentrates on the use of multijunction solar cell (MJSC) in order to increase the conversion efficiency. The DC output of solar photovoltaic (PV) system is raised by using boost convertor. MPPT technique is used to maximize the output of solar system....

multijunction solar cell with efficiency >50% Marina S. Leite, Robyn L. Woo, Jeremy N. Munday, William D. Hong, Shoghig Mesropian, Daniel C. Law, and Harry A. Atwater J. Thomas Watson Department of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E California Blvd., Pasadena, California 91125-9500, USA Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, National Institute of Standards and Tec...

A photoelectric conversion efficiency of over 10% has been achieved in thin-film polycrystalline silicon solar cells which consists of a 2 μm thick layer of polycrystalline silicon with a very small grain size (microcrystalline silicon) formed by low-temperature plasma CVD. This has shown that if the recombination velocity at grain boundaries can be made very small, then it is not necessarily i...

In this paper we quantify the constraints and opportunities for radial junction nanowire solar cells, compared to single junction and multijunction solar cells, when light trapping is included. Both nanowire and multijunction designs are reliant on a very low level of traps in the junction region, and without this, single junction designs are optimal. If low trap density at the junction can be ...

A new method for measuring component cell current-voltage (I-V) characteristics in a tandem-junction two-terminal solar cell is described. The measurements are performed with (a-Si/a-SiGe) tandem structure solar cell using two separate light beams of different wavelengths. The I-V characteristics of the compone nt cells are obtained and open-circuit voltage (Voc), short-circuit current (Isc) an...

Light management is of great importance in photovoltaic cells, as it determines the fraction of incident light entering the device. An optimal p–n junction combined with optimal light absorption can lead to a solar cell efficiency above the Shockley–Queisser limit. Here, we show how this is possible by studying photocurrent generation for a single core–shell p–i–n junction GaAs nanowire solar c...

Fill factors (FFs) of ~0.87 have been obtained for crystalline Si (c-Si) solar cells based on Ag front contacts after rapid thermal annealing. The usual single PN junction model fails to explain the high FF result. A metal/oxide/semiconductor (MOS) junction at the emitter is found to be inversely connected to the PN one, and when its barrier height/e is close to the open-circuit voltage of the ...

With looming energy crisis across the globe, achieving high efficiency and low cost solar cells have long been the key objective for photovoltaic researchers. III-V compound semiconductor based multijunction solar cells have been the dominant choice for space power due to their superior performance compared to any other existing solar cell technologies. In spite of unmatched performance of III-...

Semiconductor nanowires are a promising candidate for next-generation solar cells. However, the optical response of nanowires is, due to diffraction effects, complicated to optimize. Here, we optimize through optical modeling the absorption in a dual-junction nanowire-array solar cell in terms of the Shockley-Quessier detailed balance efficiency limit. We identify efficiency maxima that origina...

In this paper, a zinc oxide (ZnO) nanotube, fabricated by the hydrothermal growth method on triple-junction (T-J) solar cell devices to enhance efficiency, is investigated. Compared to those of bare T-J solar cells (without antireflection (AR) coating) and solar cells with Si3N4 AR coatings, the experimental results show that the T-J solar cells, which use a ZnO nanotube as an AR coating, have ...