Universal statistics of parasitic shunt formation in solar cells, and its implications for cell to module efficiency gap

Sourabh Dongaonkar; Stephen Loser; Erik J. Sheets; Katherine Zaunbrecher; Rakesh Agrawal; Tobin J. Marks; Muhammad A. Alam

doi:10.1039/c3ee24167j

Universal statistics of parasitic shunt formation in solar cells, and its implications for cell to module efficiency gap

Sourabh Dongaonkar, Stephen Loser, Erik J. Sheets, Katherine Zaunbrecher, Rakesh Agrawal, Tobin J. Marks, Muhammad A. Alam

Northwestern University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

25 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Parasitic shunt formation is an important cause of variability and module efficiency loss in all photovoltaic technologies. In this letter, we quantify the nature of this shunt variability in four major thin film photovoltaic (TFPV) technologies, namely, amorphous silicon (a-Si:H), organic (OPV), Cu(In,Ga)SSe (CIGS), and CdTe. We analyze a wide variety of datasets to show that the shunt current exhibits a robust universal log-normal behavior for all these technologies. We affirm this conclusion by rigorous statistical analysis of the available data. We use equivalent circuit simulations to quantitatively illustrate the importance of this heavy-tailed distribution towards determining the universal gap between cell and module efficiency.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	782-787
Number of pages	6
Journal	Energy and Environmental Science
Volume	6
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1039/c3ee24167j
Publication status	Published - Mar 1 2013

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ASJC Scopus subject areas

Environmental Chemistry
Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
Nuclear Energy and Engineering
Pollution

Cite this

Dongaonkar, S., Loser, S., Sheets, E. J., Zaunbrecher, K., Agrawal, R., Marks, T. J., & Alam, M. A. (2013). Universal statistics of parasitic shunt formation in solar cells, and its implications for cell to module efficiency gap. Energy and Environmental Science, 6(3), 782-787. https://doi.org/10.1039/c3ee24167j

Universal statistics of parasitic shunt formation in solar cells, and its implications for cell to module efficiency gap. / Dongaonkar, Sourabh; Loser, Stephen; Sheets, Erik J.; Zaunbrecher, Katherine; Agrawal, Rakesh; Marks, Tobin J.; Alam, Muhammad A.

In: Energy and Environmental Science, Vol. 6, No. 3, 01.03.2013, p. 782-787.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

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10.1039/c3ee24167j