Illumination and Temperature Dependence of Breakdown Mechanisms in Multi-crystalline Silicon Solar Cells

Abstract If a solar cell is partially shaded in a photovoltaic module, it can be reverse-biased and therefore dissipate power rather than generating it. When being locally concentrated, this power dissipation can lead to hot spots damaging solar modules irreversibly. In order to assess the hot spot danger of solar cells prior to module integration, their operating points under partial shading conditions need to be known which can be determined by simulation. We show, that deviations between simulated and measured module I-V characteristics can be explained by contrary temperature- and illumination-dependent effects on the reverse characteristic of a multi-crystalline silicon solar cell. A negative temperature coefficient for voltages of V