Effect of using an infrared filter on the performance of a silicon solar cell for an ultra-high concentrator photovoltaic system

Abstract

It is well known that increasing the concentration ratio of concentrator photovoltaics has a positive impact on the power output of the system but can reduce the solar cells performance due to the heightened temperatures. In this paper, we introduce the impact of using an infrared (IR) filter on the performance of a silicon solar cell as a preliminary investigation for an ultra-high concentrator photovoltaic system. The investigation is carried out in terms of the optical characterization of the Fresnel lens and the IR filter. Besides, the performance of the system has been introduced in this paper. The results show that although the IR filter protects the solar cell from damage near the tabbing wire, it reduces the experimental power output of the cell by 46.08% due to the low transmittance of the filter while the cell efficiency increased by 183.3%.