Power and Energy Commons^™

Large Scale Monolithic Solar Panel Simulation - A Study On Partial Shading Degradation, Suhas V. Baddela, Xingshu Sun, Muhammad A. Alam

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Shadow-induced degradation is a major concern for both power output and long-term reliability in solar cells. Apart from the obvious fact that shading reduces the amount of solar irradiance available to solar panels, it may lead to formation of hot spots, where solar cells are forced to reverse breakdown with localized heating, and potentially, permanent damage. To get a better understanding of shadow-induced degradation, we develop an electro-thermal coupled simulator that can self-consistently solve the electrical and thermal distributions of solar panel under arbitrary shading conditions. The simulation framework consists of two part: a) compact models that can describe the …