PCE of solar panels improved by lower temperatures

The solar power conversion efficiency (PCE) of a panel decreases as it gets hotter and finding ways of keeping them cool could improve the return on investment of solar power systems.

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The long-standing focus of photovoltaics (PV) research has been to improve solar modules’ PCE and make solar power more cost-competitive than non-renewable power generation. The higher the PCE, the better the PV system’s financial payback over its lifetime or the lower its levelised cost of energy (LCOE).

“All solar cells generate heat, which can lower the electrical output and shorten the module lifetime,” said Lujia Xu, a postdoc in Stefaan De Wolf’s team. Panels can regularly reach 60-65^oC, but heat’s impact on LCOE rarely receives much consideration, the team in Saudi Arabia said.

Now, Xu, De Wolf and their colleagues have developed a metric that directly compares the LCOE gains by reducing the module temperature with the LCOE gains for improving module efficiency. Under typical operating conditions, the same improvement in LCOE by finding a hard-won one per cent gain in PCE could be achieved by lowering the module temperature by as little as 3^oC, they showed.