Reduced Shading Effect on Half-Cell Modules - Measurement and Simulation

Commercial PV modules consist of series connected solar cells and three bypass diodes to protect the strings against hotspots. The power loss of the module's strings under partial shading conditions is related to the shading area. In this work, we show that solar module's behavior under partial shading conditions can be improved and its energy characteristics are raised by using halved cells and changing the module configurations and design. A reference module using full size solar cells and a half-cell module are simulated and fabricated and the results are discussed for different shading scenarios. Both simulation and experiment results agree to a good extent and they show better performance of half-cell modules under partial shading conditions and higher output power due to optical gain and less electrical losses in cell connectors. The short-circuit current of the module increase to about 3% due to the cell spacing and the Fill Factor rises to 1.48%. Finally, the movement direction of shade can affect the half-cell module's performance significantly.