Theoretical investigation of the temperature characteristics and output parameters of an industrial crystalline silicon solar cell with a microfluidic cooling system

Abstract Operating temperature is a key factor affecting the output power of a crystalline silicon solar cell (c-Si SC). Based on solving basic semiconductor equations, Maxwell equations and heat flow equations by finite difference method, this work has theoretically investigated the influences of microfluidic cooling system on the temperature distributions and output parameters of an industrial c-Si SC packaged as a module form, where the cooling system is installed the interface between the aluminum electrode and back ethylene vinyl acetate layer and the cooling medium flowing through microchannel is selected as water. Under the influences of the cooling system, the back surface temperature of the c-Si SC is fixed at about water temperature and the front surface temperature will decrease with the water temperature decreasing. The temperature distributions of c-Si active layer and aluminum layer decrease approximately linearly along the two layer’s thickness directions. The cooling effects of the cooling system are mainly determined by water temperature and when the filling factor of microchannel is larger than 0.1, its influences on the temperature distribution of the c-Si SC are small. In the environmental temperature range from −15 °C to 60 °C, the increase rates of Voc, FF and η per degree Celsius with the water temperature decreasing are about 0.0014 V, 0.036% and 0.05%, respectively.