Illumination Dependence of Reverse Leakage Current in Silicon Solar Cells

In the modeling of PV modules under shading and low illumination, a complete description of reverse bias behavior at the cell level is critical to understanding module response. This is particularly important when dealing with high voltage configurations such as tandem and shingled modules. Current simulation studies often do not account for the effects of incident light when dealing with operating voltages approaching cell breakdown. In this article, we investigate the illumination dependence of leakage current at the onset of breakdown in crystalline silicon solar cells. A study of the most popular cell technologies in the market today reveals a light induced effect under reverse bias that is prominent for p-type and small for n-type cells. Additionally, this effect is found to be larger in mono c-Si than multi c-Si cells. Because this phenomenon is not captured in current breakdown models such as Bishop's equation, we propose a split-cell model to describe partial shading in p-type cells. The outlined approach divides the cell into two parallel regions and is advantageous for its procedural simplicity as well as its ability to generalize effects from complex shading profiles.