Study on the techno economical performance of industrial type crystalline silicon solar cell using alternative grid metallization and design optimization

Abstract

Electrical energy demand is increasing day by day while the existing source of energy newlinegeneration deplete rapidly and causes global warming, so adaptability of alternative newlineenergy sources that should be renewable, atmospherically clean, replenishable during newlinehuman time cycle and cost effective for large scale production is now essential for newlinemankind. In between all the available renewable sources, solar energy gain much newlineattention due to its environmental friendliness as it does not produce harmful greenhouse newlinegases, does not pollute air or water and global availability because the solar radiation newlinereaches the earth surface all over the world. For large scale production, presently c-Si newlinesolar cells-based technology dominates the market. The fundamental challenge of any newlinetechnology is to reduce the production cost and/or to enhance efficiency of power newlinegeneration. To enhance the c-Si solar cell efficiency, continuous research is going on newlinedesign optimization, passivation improvement, novel contact formation etc. Research is newlinealso going to reduce the solar cell manufacturing cost by means of reducing the material newlinecost or material consumption. The review made in this thesis reveals that for efficiency newlineimprovement more research is going on the contact formation, passivation whereas very newlineless work is done on the effect of grid parameters especially of busbars on solar cell newlineperformance. According to the technological roadmap, it is also cleared that solar cell newlinemanufacturing cost is reduced rapidly. After silicon, the major cost is based on the newlinemetallization cost. So, reduction of costly metal consumption, or the replacement of newlinecostly metal can be a good choice for that. This technological gap has triggered the newlineresearcher to optimize the grid parameters to reduce the power losses and hence increase newlinethe efficiency and reduce the metal consumption which will reduced levelized cost of newlineelectricity (LCOE). For solar cell manufacturing cost reduction, another work is done to newlinereplace the costly metal