| Abstract: | Textured solar cells are becoming the norm in terrestrial applications. In most applications of textured solar cells the light will be incident at various angles, i.e., time of day for flat plate collectors or radial position for a concentrating lens system. However, a detailed analysis of the performance of light trapping geometries at various angles of incidence has not been reported. A quantitative analysis of the light trapping of several texturing geometriesas a function of angle of incidence, in the context of a concentrating Fresnel lens, is presented for the first time. For normally incident light at one sun intensity the improvement in collection efficiency for the textured cells compared to a planar cell is 4.84%, 7.74%, and 12.72% for the slats, inverted pyramids, and perpendicular slats geometries, respectively. At 500 suns concentration under a Fresnel lens the collection efficiency compared to the planar cell is 5.26%, 10.9% and 12.28% for the same three texturing geometries. This implies that a linear response to concentration does not apply for textured surfaces. Collection efficiency as a function of angle of incidence is also used to provide guidelines for cell orientation within flat plate arrays to provide maximum collection efficiency at several hours of the day. |
