• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.113-121
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• 2017

The researches on the silicon-based thin films are being actively carried out. The silicon-based thin films can be made as amorphous, microcrystalline and mixed phase and it is known that the optical bandgap can be controlled accordingly. They are suitable materials for the fabrication of single junction, tandem and triple junction solar cells. It can be used as a doping layer through the bonding of boron and phosphorus. The carbon and oxygen can bond with silicon to form a wide range of optical gap. Also, The optical gap of hydrogenated amorphous silicon germanium can be lower than that of silicon. By controlling the optical gaps, it is possible to fabricate multi-junction thin film silicon solar cells with high efficiencies which can be promising photovoltaic devices.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers P
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• v.59 no.3
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• pp.293-297
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• 2010

Next generation concentrating photovoltaic technologies could have a large-scale impact on world electricity production once they will become economically attractive and grid parity will be reached. Multi-junction solar cells will be characterised by a high value of the cell economical performance index if the cells were able to operate at high concentration level. Concentrating the sunlight by optical devices like lenses or mirrors reduces the area of expensive solar cells or modules, and, moreover, increases their efficiency. Accurate and reliable tracking is an important issue to maintain high the CPV system output power. Further, for high concentration CPV systems, the actual tracker cost is about 20% of the total CPV system cost. In this paper high-concentration is defined as systems using concentration ratios well above 100 times the one sun intensity and trackerlss CPV system studied. Using sphericalness lens and parallel MJ cell connection method were suggested and achieved experiment on a clear day in summer. Development of these high performance multi-junction CPV module promises to accelerate growth in photovoltaic power generation.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.1156-1165
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• 2017

A high performance interleaved bridgeless boost power factor correction (PFC) rectifier operating under the critical current conduction mode (CrM) is proposed in this paper to improve the efficiency and system performance of various applications, such as nano-grid systems. By combining the interleaved technique with the bridgeless topology, the circuit contains two independent branches without rectifier diodes. The branches operate in interleaved mode for each respective half-line period. Moreover, when operating in CrM, all the power switches take on soft-switching, thereby reducing switching losses and raising system efficiency. In addition, the input current flows through a minimum amount of power devices. By employing a commercial PFC controller, an effective control scheme is used for the proposed circuit. The operating principle of the proposed circuit is presented, and the design considerations are also demonstrated. Simulations and experiments have been carried out to evaluate theoretical analysis and feasibility of the proposed circuit.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.76-84
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• 2019

Silicon heterojunction solar cells (SHJ) have dominated the photovoltaic market up till now but their conversion performance is practically limited to around 26% compared with the theoretical efficiency limit of 29.4%. A silicon based multi-junction devices are expected to overcome this limitation. In this report, we briefly review the state-of-art characteristic of wide-gap materials which has played a role as top sub-cells in silicon based multi-junction solar cells. In addition, we indicate significantly practical challenges and key issues of these multi-junction combination. Finally, we focus to some characteristics of III-V/c-Si tandem configuration which are reaching highly record performance in multi-junction silicon solar cells.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.49-64
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• 2020

Photovoltaic and Thermal collector (PV/T) systems are renewable energy devices that can produce electricity and heat energy simultaneously using solar panels and heat exchangers. Since PV/T systems are exposed to the outdoors, their reliability is affected by various environmental factors. This paper presents a reliability test for a PV/T system and evaluates the test results. The reliability assessment entails performance, environment, safety, and life tests. The factor that had the greatest influence on the life of the system was the hydraulic pressure applied to the heat exchanger. A test was conducted by repeatedly applying pressure to the PV/T system, and a reliability analysis was conducted based on the test results. As a result, the shape parameter (β) value of 5.6658 and the B10life 308,577 cycles at the lower 95% confidence interval were obtained.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.49-55
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• 2022

With rapid growth in light-harvesting efficiency from 3.8 to 25.8%, organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have attracted great attention as promising photovoltaic devices. However, despite of their outstanding performance, the commercialization of PSCs has been suffered from severe stability issues, especially for UV and humidity: (i) UV irradiation towards PSCs is able to lead UV-induced decomposition of perovskite films or catalytic reactions of charge-transporting layers, and (ii) exposure to surrounding humidity causes irreversible hydration of perovskite layers by the penetration of water molecules, resulting considerable decrease in their power-conversion efficiency (PCE). This review investigates current status of strategies to enhance UV and humidity stability of PSCs in terms of UV-management and moisture protection, respectively. Furthermore, the multifunctional approach to increase long-term stability as well as performance is discussed as advanced research directions for the commercialization of PSCs.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.47-54
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• 2017

We report finding ways to improve the long-term reliability of PV module including the heterostructure with the intrinsic thin layer (HIT) solar cell. We point out the stability of the products of Panasonic HIT cell. We account for a brief description of the module manufacturing process to investigate the issues of each process and analyze the causes. We carried out the silicon PV module of the glass to glass type under the damp heat test around 1000 hours. However, it degraded around 7% of PV module power after 300 hours exposure in comparison with the initial status (Initial: 12.7 Watt). We investigated possible cause and solutions for the module performance to develop the long-term reliability.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.471.2-471.2
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• 2014

We demonstrate here that an improvement in precursor film density (green density) leads to a great enhancement in the photovoltaic performance of CuInSe2 (CISe) thin film solar cells fabricated with Cu-In nanoparticle precursor films via chemical solution deposition. A cold-isostatic pressing (CIP) technique was applied to uniformly compress the precursor film over the entire surface (measuring 3~4 cm2) and was found to increase its relative density (particle packing density) by ca. 20%, which resulted in an appreciable improvement in the microstructural features of the sintered CISe film in terms of lower porosity, reduced grain boundaries, and a more uniform surface morphology. The low-bandgap (Eg=1.0 eV) CISe PV devices with the CIP-treated film exhibited greatly enhanced open-circuit voltage (VOC, from 0.265 V to 0.413 V) and fill factor (FF, from 0.34 to 0.55), as compared to the control devices. As a consequence, an almost 3-fold increase in the average power conversion efficiency, 3.0 to 8.2% (with the highest value of 9.02%), was realized without an anti-reflection coating. A diode analysis revealed that the enhanced VOC and FF were essentially attributed to the reduced reverse saturation current density (j0) and diode ideality factor (n). This is associated with the suppressed recombination, likely due to the reduction in recombination sites such as grain/air surfaces (pores), inter-granular interfaces, and defective CISe/CdS junctions in the CIP-treated device. From the temperature dependences of VOC, it was confirmed that the CIP-treated devices suffer less from interface recombination.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.369-375
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• 2008

In this paper, a method for controlling the a single-phase grid-connected photovoltaic(PV) system using Z-source inverter (ZSI) is proposed. The operating region of grid-connected ZSI system with a variation of PV output voltage are analyzed by considering the voltage stress across switching devices. The switching patterns for controlling effectively the shoot-through time while reducing the switching loss are suggested. Both the simulation studies and experimental results with 32-bit DSP are carried out to verify the performances of proposed system.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.172-180
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• 2012

Z-source inverters (ZSI) are used to realize both DC voltage boost and DC-AC inversion in single stage with a reduced number of power switching devices. A traditional MPPT control algorithm provides a shoot-through interval which should be inserted in the switching waveforms of the inverter to output the maximum power to the Z-network. At this instant, the voltage across the Z-source capacitor is equal to the output voltage of a PV array at the maximum power point (MPP). The control of the Z-source capacitor voltage beyond the MPP voltage of a PV array is not facilitated in traditional MPPT algorithms. This paper presents a unified MPPT control algorithm to simultaneously achieve MPPT as well as Z-source capacitor voltage control. Development and implementation of the proposed algorithm and a comparison with traditional results are discussed. The effectiveness of the proposed unified MPPT control strategy is implemented in Matlab/Simulink software and verified by experimental results.