Design and Development of Solar Cell Integrated Moisture and Temperature Sensors for Photovoltaic Modules

We are presenting the design and development of a capacitive moisture sensor and a resistive temperature sensor integrated into solar cells. The sensors are produced by screen printing on solar cell wafers using a silver paste commonly used in solar cell production. The sensor cells are designed to be integrated into PV modules. For evaluation of the sensors, measurements of imprinted wafers laminated between two layers of encapsulant were performed. Impedance measurements on the moisture sensor indicate an exponential dependency of the capacitance on the moisture content in the encapsulant at constant temperatures. The temperature sensors show a high sensitivity and reproducibility.