Renewable Energy

Photovoltaic II

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 FROM CELLS TO MODULES TO ARRAYS

Individual cell produces about 0.5 V

The basic building block for PV applications is a module consisting of a number of
pre-wired cells in series, all encased in tough, weather-resistant packages.
A typical module has 36 cells in series and is often designated as a “12-V module”
even though it is capable of delivering much higher voltages than that.
Some 12-V modules have only 33 cells, which may, be desirable in certain very
simple battery charging systems.
Large 72-cell modules some of which have all of the cells wired in series, in which
case they are referred to as “24-V module”
Some 72-cell modules can be field-wired to act either as 24-V modules with all 72
cells in series or as 12-V modules with two parallel strings having 36 series cells in
each.

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Multiple modules, in turn, can be wired in series to increase voltage and
in parallel to increase current
Such combinations of modules are referred to as an array

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For cells wired in series, their voltages at any given current add.
A typical module will have 36 cells.

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Voltage and Current from a PV Module.

A PV module is made up of 36 identical cells, all wired in series. With 1-

sun insolation (1 kW/m2), each cell has short-circuit current ISC = 3.4 A
and at 25◦C its reverse saturation current is I0 = 6 × 10^−10 A. Parallel
resistance RP = 6.6 Ω and series resistance RS = 0.005 Ω

a. Find the voltage, current, and power delivered when the junction
voltage of each cell is 0.50 V

b. Set up a spreadsheet for I and V and present a few lines of output to

show how it works

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Using Vd = 0.50 V

Under these conditions, the voltage produced by the 36-cell module:

Power delivered is therefore

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 For a cell to have losses of less than 1% due to its parallel resistance, RP
should be greater than about

For a large cell, ISC might be around 7 A and VOC might be about 0.6 V, which
says its parallel resistance should be greater than about 9 Ω .

For a cell to have less than 1% losses due to the series resistance, RS
will need to be less than about

which, for a large cell with ISC = 7 A and VOC = 0.6 V, would be less than
0.0009 Ω

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 From Modules to Arrays
Modules can be wired in series to increase voltage, and in parallel to increase
current. Arrays are made up of some combination of series and parallel
modules to increase power

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 Parallel – series connection

Two ways to wire an array with three modules in series and two modules in
parallel. Although the I –V curves for arrays are the same, two strings of three
modules each (a) is preferred. The total I –V curve of the array is shown in (c).
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There is a reason, however, to prefer the wiring of strings in parallel (Fig.a). If an
entire string is removed from service for some reason, the array can still deliver
whatever voltage is needed by the load, though the current is diminished, which
is not the case when a parallel group of modules is removed.

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 THE PV I–V CURVE UNDER STANDARD TEST
CONDITIONS (STC)

Consider, for the moment, a single PV module that you want to connect to
some sort of a load. The load might be a dc motor driving a pump or it might be
a battery, for example. Before the load is connected, the module sitting in the
sun will produce an open-circuit voltage VOC, but no current will flow. If the
terminals of the module are shorted together (which doesn’t hurt the module
at all, by the way), the short-circuit current ISC will flow, but the output voltage
will be zero. In both cases, since power is the product of current and voltage,
no power is delivered by the module and no power is received by the load.
When the load is actually connected, some combination of current and voltage
will result and power will be delivered

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To figure out how much power, we have to consider the I –V characteristic
curve of the module as well as the I –V characteristic curve of the load.

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The I –V curve and power output for a PV module. At the maximum power
point (MPP) the module delivers the most power that it can under the
conditions of sunlight and temperature for which the I –V curve has been
drawn.

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Since PV I –V curves shift all around as the amount of insolation changes
and as the temperature of the cells varies, standard test conditions (STC)
have been established to enable fair comparisons of one module to another.

Those test conditions include a solar irradiance of 1 kW/m2 (1 sun) with

spectral distribution corresponding to an air mass ratio of 1.5 (AM 1.5).

The standard cell temperature for testing purposes is 25◦C (it is important to
note that 25◦ is cell temperature, not ambient temperature).

Manufacturers always provide performance data under these operating

conditions, some examples of which are shown in Table

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Question: how to adjust rated power to account for temperature effects and
how to adjust it to give us an estimate of the actual ac power that the module
and inverter combination will deliver?

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For crystalline silicon cells, VOC drops by about 0.37% for each degree Celsius
increase in temperature and ISC increases by approximately 0.05%. The net
result when cells heat up is the MPP slides slightly upward and toward the left
with a decrease in maximum power available of about 0.5%/◦C.

Given this significant shift in performance as cell temperature changes, it

should be quite apparent that temperature needs to be included in any
estimate of module performance.

Cells vary in temperature not only because ambient temperatures change,

but also because insolation on the cells changes. Since only a small fraction
of the insolation hitting a module is converted to electricity and carried
away, most of that incident energy is absorbed and converted to heat

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 NOCT - nominal operating cell
temperature
The NOCT is cell temperature in a module when ambient is 20◦C, solar
irradiation is 0.8 kW/m2, and windspeed is 1 m/s. To account for other
ambient conditions, the following expression may be used:

where Tcell is cell temperature (◦C), Tamb is ambient temperature, and S is

solar insolation (kW/m2).

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Impact of Cell Temperature on Power for a PV Module.

Estimate cell temperature, open-circuit voltage, and maximum power output

for the 150-W BP2150S module under conditions of 1-sun insolation and
ambient temperature 30◦C. The module has a NOCT of 47◦C.

Solution. with S = 1 kW/m2, cell temperature is estimated to be

From Table, for this module at the standard temperature of 25◦C, VOC = 42.8 V.
Since VOC drops by 0.37%/◦C, the new VOC will be about

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With maximum power expected to drop about 0.5%/◦C, this 150-W module
at its maximum power point will deliver

which is a rather significant drop of 19% from its rated power.

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When the NOCT is not given, another approach to estimating cell temperature is
based on the following:

where γ is a proportionality factor that depends somewhat on windspeed

and how well ventilated the modules are when installed. Typical values of γ
range between 25◦C and 35◦C; that is, in 1 sun of insolation, cells tend to be
25–35◦C hotter than their environment.

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 SHADING IMPACTS ON I –V CURVES

The output of a PV module can be reduced dramatically when even a small

portion of it is shaded.
A single shaded cell in a long string of cells can easily cut output power by more
than half.
External diodes, purposely added by the PV manufacturer or by the system
designer, can help preserve the performance of PV modules.
Such diodes are usually added in parallel with modules or blocks of cells within
a module.

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Impacts of Shading on a PV Module.

The 36-cell PV module described in the previous example had a parallel

resistance per cell of RP = 6.6 Ω . In full sun and at current I = 2.14 A the
output voltage was found there to be V = 19.41 V. If one cell is shaded and
this current somehow stays the same, then:
a. What would be the new module output voltage and power?
b. What would be the voltage drop across the shaded cell?
c. How much power would be dissipated in the shaded cell?

Solution

a. the drop in module voltage will be

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The new output voltage will be 19.41 − 14.66 = 4.75 V.
Power delivered by the module with one cell shaded would be

For comparison, in full sun the module was producing 41.5 W.

b. All of that 2.14 A of current goes through the parallel plus series resistance
(0.005 ) of the shaded cell, so the drop across the shaded cell will be

normally a cell in the sun will add about 0.5 V to the module; this shaded
cell subtracts over 14 V from the module.

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The power dissipated in the shaded cell is voltage drop times current, which is

All of that power dissipated in the shaded cell is converted to heat, which
can cause a local hot spot that may permanently damage the plastic
laminates enclosing the cell

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Effects of shading on the I –V curves for a PV module. The dashed line shows a
typical voltage that the module would operate at when charging a 12-V battery;
the impact on charging current is obviously severe

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 Bypass Diodes for Shade Mitigation

In full sun a cell may contribute around 0.5 V to the module output; but
when a cell is shaded, it can have a large voltage drop across it.

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Mitigating the shade problem with a bypass diode. In the sun (a), the bypass
diode is cut off and all the normal current goes through the solar cell. In shade
(b), the bypass diode conducts current around the shaded cell, allowing just
the diode drop of about 0.6 V to occur.

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Impact of bypass diodes. Drawn for five modules in series delivering 65 V to a
battery bank. With one module having two shaded cells, charging current drops
by almost one-third when there are no bypass diodes. With the module bypass
diodes there is very little drop.

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