Integrated cooling solution for concentrator photovoltaic cells

Abstract

The efficiency of the most modern photovoltaic cells currently reaches 40–45%, which is achieved by concentrator systems. However, despite better device efficiencies concentrator photovoltaic cells have major drawback, namely the high amount of waste heat, which requires new cooling solutions.This paper gives a short overview of the current cooling techniques and proposes a novel microchannel cooling solution for concentrator photovoltaic cells. In the concept, the microscale channels are integrated into the backside metallization of the PV device. The paper gives a description of the technological process that can be used to produce microchannels on the back of solar cells and shows the optimization of the channels to achieve optimal cooling performance.