Regular Article

Temperature and color management of silicon solar cells for building integrated photovoltaic

¹ Univ Lyon, CNRS, INSA-Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CETHIL UMR5008, 69621 Villeurbanne, France
² Université de Lyon, Institut des Nanotechnologies de Lyon INL – UMR5270 CNRS INSA Lyon, 69621 Villeurbanne, France

^* e-mail: fabien.mandorlo@insa-lyon.Fr

Received: 27 March 2017
Received in final form: 12 July 2017
Accepted: 7 September 2017
Published online: 29 January 2018

Abstract

Color management of integrated photovoltaics must meet two criteria of performance: provide maximum conversion efficiency and allow getting the chosen colors with an appropriate brightness, more particularly when using side by side solar cells of different colors. As the cooling conditions are not necessarily optimal, we need to take into account the influence of the heat transfer and temperature. In this article, we focus on the color space and brightness achieved by varying the antireflective properties of flat silicon solar cells. We demonstrate that taking into account the thermal effects allows freely choosing the color and adapting the brightness with a small impact on the conversion efficiency, except for dark blue solar cells. This behavior is especially true when heat exchange by convection is low. Our optical simulations show that the perceived color, for single layer ARC, is not varying with the position of the observer, whatever the chosen color. The use of a double layer ARC adds flexibility to tune the wanted color since the color space is greatly increased in the green and yellow directions. Last, choosing the accurate material allows both bright colors and high conversion efficiency at the same time.