Abstract
Shadowing location and percentage on the solar cell surface is experimentally investigated and discussed. Behavior of the solar cell electrical parameters is shown to be dissimilar according to the shadowing location on the solar cell surface. The diode model describes the solar cell characteristics using the cell physical parameters and the incident radiation intensity as inputs. In that model, cell characteristics with edge and central shadowing of its surface are indistinguishable, although they are experimentally found to behave differently. An increase in both voltage and fill factor was observed, which resulted from shadowing the edges of the cell in comparison with central shadowing of the cell with the same total covering area, and vice versa in case of current density. Both central and edge shading have negative effect on the cell efficiency, although edge shading has higher effect at very thin strips, which is easy to occur in the field. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.