Multijunction solar arrays for space and terrestrial applications

Cover Page

Cite item

Full Text

Abstract

Photovoltaic conversion of the solar energy is the most prospective direction of the renewable power engineering. Solar arrays ensure power supply of spacecrafts and are gaining increasingly more application on the Earth. In the majority of developed countries, laws on state support of the “green” power engineering assisted in a substantial increase of power of the solar photovoltaic systems have been adopted. The main barrier to increasing the terrestrial solar photovoltaics development rates is a relatively high cost of the “solar” electric power. The ways for reducing the cost are the rise of the efficiency of power systems and the reduction of the material consumption for arrays based on multijunction solar cells. Results of multijunction solar cells and modules developments for space and terrestrial solar arrays are discussed in the article. In the last years, a significant experience on creation of multijunction solar cells was accumulated. Cascade solar cells and solar photovoltaic installations on their base with sunlight concentrators have been developed. At present, the terrestrial cascade solar cell efficiency exceeds 45%, which is substantially higher than that in conventional Si and thin-film solar arrays. The cascade solar cell efficiency increase has been achieved at the expense of “splitting” the sunlight spectrum into several intervals by the solar cell semiconductor structure fulfilling more effective photon energy conversion of each of these intervals in a definite parts of this structure. It is shown that multijunction solar cells provide the highest efficiency and they are the basic components of space arrays. Multijunction solar cells provide the highest conversion efficiency of concentrated sunlight as well. It opens prospects for decreasing the solar cell area and cost proportionally to the sunlight concentration. Developed concentrated photovoltaic installations are promising for wide applications in the high scale terrestrial solar photovoltaic energetics.

About the authors

Viacheslav M. Andreev

Ioffe Institute

Author for correspondence.
Email: vmandreev@mail.ioffe.ru

Head of the Photovoltaics Laboratory of the Ioffe Institute, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor

26 Polytechnicheskaya St, Saint Petersburg, 194021, Russian Federation

References

  1. Andreev VM, Grilikhes VA, Rumyantsev VD. Photovoltaic Conversion of Concentrated Sunlight. New York: John Wiley & Sons; 1997.
  2. Luque A, Andreev V. (eds.) Concentrator photovoltaics. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg; 2007.
  3. Alferov ZI, Andreev VM, Rumyantsev VD. III-V heterostructures in photovoltaics. In: Luque A, Andreev V. (eds.) Concentrator photovoltaics. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg; 2007. p. 25-50.
  4. Petrova-Koch V, Hezel R, Goetzberger A. (eds.) High-efficient low-cost photovoltaics. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg; 2020.
  5. Alferov ZI, Andreev VM, Shvarts MZ. III-V solar cells and concentrator arrays. In: Petrova-Koch V, Hezel R, Goetzberger A. (eds.) High-efficient low-cost photovoltaics. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg; 2020. p. 133-174. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1007/978-3-030-22864-4_8.
  6. Rumyantsev VD. Terrestrial concentrator PV systems. In: Luque A, Andreev V. (eds.) Concentrator photovoltaics. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg; 2007. p. 151-174.
  7. Bett AW, Dimroth F, Shiefer G. Multijunction concentrator solar cells. In: Luque A, Andreev V. (eds.) Concentrator photovoltaics. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg; 2007. p. 67-87.
  8. Sala G, Luque A. Past experiences and new challenges of PV concentrators. In: Luque A, Andreev V. (eds.) Concentrator photovoltaics. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg; 2007. p. 1-23.
  9. Algora C, Rey-Stolle I. (eds.) Handbook of concentrator photovoltaic technology. John Wiley & Sons; 2016.
  10. Pakhanov NA, Andreev VM, Shvarts MZ, Pchelyakov OP. State-of-the-art architectures and technologies of high-efficiency solar cells based on III-V heterostructures for space and terrestrial applications. Optoelectronics, instrumentation and data processing. 2018;54(2):187-202.
  11. Kalinovsky VS, Grebenschikova EA, Dmitriev PA, Ilinskaya ND, Kontrosh EV, Malevskaya AV, Usikova AA, Andreev VM. Photoelectric characteristics of InGaP/Ga(In)As/Ge solar cells fabricated with a single-stage wet chemical etching separation process. AIP Conf. Proc. 2014;1616:326-330.
  12. Kalinovskii VS, Kontrosh EV, Andreeva AV, Ionova EA, Malevskaya AV, Andreev VM, Malutina-Bronskaya VB, Zalesskiy VB, Lemeshevskaya AM, Kuzoro VI, Khalimanovich VI, Zayceva MK. CPV module based on a hybrid solar cell. AIP Conf. Proc. 2019;2149: 030003.
  13. Andreev VM, Malevskiy DA, Pokrovskiy PV, Rumyantsev VD, Chekalin AV. On the main photoelectric characteristics of three-junction InGaP/InGaAs/Ge solar cells in a broad temperature range (-197 °C ≤ T ≤ +85 °C). Semiconductors. 2016;50(10):1356-1361.
  14. Kalyuzhnyy NA, Mintairov SA, Salii RA, Nadtochiy AM, Payusov AS, Brunkov PN, Nevedomsky VN, Shvarts MZ, Martí A, Andreev VM, Luque A. Increasing the quantum efficiency of InAs/GaAs QD arrays for solar cells grown by MOVPE without using strain-balance technology. Progress in photovoltaics: research and applications. 2016;24(9):1261-1271. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ pip.2789.
  15. Sasaki K, Agui T, Nakaido K, Takahashi N, Onitsuka R, Takamoto T. Development of InGaP/GaAs/ InGaAs inverted triple junction concentrator solar cells. AIP Conf. Proc. 2013;1556:22-25.
  16. Aiken D, Dons E, Je S-S, Miller N, Newman F, Patel P, Spann J. Lattice matched solar cells with 40% average efficiency in pilot production and a roadmap to 50%. IEEE J. Photovoltaics. 2013;3(1):542-547.
  17. Geisz JF, Duda A, France RM, Friedman DJ, Garcia I, Olavarria W, Olson JM, Steiner MA, Ward JS, Young M. Optimization of 3-junction inverted metamorphic solar cells for high-temperature and high-concentration operation. AIP Conf. Proc. 2013;1477:44-48.
  18. Dimroth F, Grave M, Beutel P, Fiedeler U, Karcher C, Tibbits TND, Oliva E, Siefer G, Schachtner M, Wekkeli A, Bett AW, Krause R, Piccin M, Blanc N, Drazek C, Guiot E, Ghyselen B, Salvetat T, Tauzin A, Signamarcheix T, Dobrich A, Hannappel T, Schwarzburg K. Wafer bonded four-junction GaInP/GaAs/GaInAsP/GaInAs concentrator solar cells with 44.7% efficiency. Progress in photovoltaics: research and applications. 2014;22(3): 277-282.
  19. France RM, Geisz JF, Garcia I, Steiner MA, McMahon WE, Friedman DJ, Moriarty TE, Osterwald C, Ward SJ, Duda A, Young M, Olavarria WJ. Quadruple-junction inverted metamorphic concentrator devices. IEEE J. Photovoltaics. 2015;5(1):432-437.

Copyright (c) 2020 Andreev V.M.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This website uses cookies

You consent to our cookies if you continue to use our website.

About Cookies