Analysing consequence of solar irradiance on amorphous silicon solar cell in variable underwater environments

Abstract

Summary Harvesting underwater Solar energy using photovoltaic (PV) technology leads to an innovative approach to utilize it in monitoring various underwater sensors, devices, or other autonomous systems using modern‐day power electronics. Another huge advantage of placing PV cells underwater comes from the fact that the water itself can provide cooling and cleaning for the cells. Such advantages come with many challenges and constraints due to the underwater spectral change and decrease in Solar radiation with an increase in water depth. In this work, an experimental set‐up has been realized to create an underwater environment and further characterized in the indoor environment using the Solar simulator. Moreover, the transfer of Solar radiation through water and the performance of amorphous silicon Solar cell underwater up to 0.2 m has been analysed in changing underwater environments. This investigation shows a better understanding of solar radiation underwater and the amorphous silicon solar cell underwater at shallow depths with considering the water depth up to 0.2 m, salinity 3.5%, total dissolved salts, and other impurities affecting the solar radiation and the performance of amorphous silicon Solar cell in underwater conditions. In addition to that, the maximum power output Pmax of amorphous silicon Solar cell is 0.0367 W at 0.2 m in the case of DI water. In contrast, in real seawater and artificial seawater with 3.5% salinity, it shows 0.0337 W and 0.0327 W, respectively.

Investigation of Silicon Solar Cells under Submerged Conditions with the Influence of Various Parameters: A Comparative Study

“…[17][18][19][20][21][22] The polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) was used to encapsulate the solar cells to safeguard them from water, because it is optically translucent, hydrophobic, sterile, nontoxic, and usually nonflammable. [20] Our previous work incorporated the encapsulation process [20] and also performance analysis, the solar cells before and after encapsulation. [21] The propagation of solar radiation in water was characterized using the submerged pyranometer (Apogee Instruments Inc., USA) with different water conditions.…”

“…[21] and lake water (Shamirpet Lake, Hyderabad, India). [17][18][19][20] Different types of color filters with high transmittance (greater than 90%) have been used to filter the spectrum to obtain for various split spectral ranges from the solar simulator. The spectroradiometer from the ocean insight has been used to measure the spectral ranges from the filters.…”

“…Also, it depends on the water depths and varies with the water quality as well. [20] Figure 2 shows the underwater solar radiation for 20 cm depth for various water environments. It shows that the underwater solar radiation declines with the rise in the water depths.…”

“…However, the salinity present in the real seawater conditions shows very little significance in transferring the solar radiation in water, which is also observed in our previous studies. [18][19][20][21] The DI water and normal water show slightly high in transmitting the underwater solar radiation, because the DI water is pure, and the normal water contains negligible water impurities. Although, in lake water, the propagation of solar radiation is poor, it is advantageous that it can still transmit solar radiation, because it mainly contains the dissolved solids, such as bacteria and algae, which absorb the solar radiation instead of transmitting it.…”

“…So far, various solar cells, such as monocrystalline, polycrystalline, and amorphous silicon, have been investigated in submerged conditions with changing water environments. [19,20] In this work, a comparative analysis has been developed among the existing commercially available monocrystalline, polycrystalline, and amorphous silicon solar cells with various water environments, such as the deionized (DI) pure water, normal water, real seawater (salinity-3.5%), and lake water, varying spectral ranges using optical color glass filters, such as short-pass DOI: 10.1002/ente.202100018 Solar photovoltaic (PV) is one of the emerging technologies in underwater power systems such as water monitoring and sensing devices in marine environments. Harnessing the underwater solar energy is a massive advantage because of the abundant amount of solar energy and space covered by water on the surface of the Earth.…”