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Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University's research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. Single copies of full items can be reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, as well as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page. The content must not be changed in any way. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holder. The full policy is available online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/policies.html This document may differ from the final, published version of the research and has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies. To read and/or cite from the published version of the research, please visit the publisher's website (a subscription may be required.)Understanding the effects of sand and dust accumulation on photovoltaic modules AbstractNumerical and analytical models of sand and dust particle accumulation on photovoltaic modules in dry regions are presented and supported by a laboratory investigation of sand particle accumulation on a glass surface. Both models and the experimental data indicate that the reduction in the free fractional area can be described by an exponential decay resulting from the formation of clusters of particles. Such clusters can support particles in upper layers which reduce the available area for photon capture by a much smaller amount than particles resting directly on the glass surface. The results qualitatively describe existing field data beyond the linear regime and are developed to account for field conditions, including analysis of photovoltaic module tilt, humidity and wind speed. This investigation is intended as a basis of an engineering design tool to assess the case for including photovoltaics in dry regions.

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We present structural and optical spectroscopy studies of thin films of Cu2ZnSnSe4 (CZTSe) with strong copper deficiency deposited on Mo/Glass substrates and selenised at 450, 500 or 550 °C. Solar cells fabricated from these films demonstrated efficiencies up to 7.4% for selenisation at 500 °C. Structural analysis based on X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy revealed the presence of SnSe2 in the film selenised at 450 °C but not detected in the films selenised at higher temperatures. A progressive decrease of the Sn and Se content was observed as the selenisation temperature increased. Photoluminescence excitation was used to determine the bandgaps at 4.2 K. Detailed measurements of the temperature and excitation intensity dependencies of the photoluminescence spectra allow the recombination mechanisms of the observed emission bands to be identified as band-to-impurity and band-to-band transitions, and their evolution with selenisation temperature changes to be analysed. The strongest band-to-band transition is recorded in the PL spectra of the film selenised at 500 °C and can be observed from 6 K to room temperature. The compositional and structural changes in the films and their influence on the optoelectronic properties of CZTSe and solar cells are discussed

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Abstract-In this paper, a novel self-complementary shaped multiple-L slot loaded suspended microstrip patch antenna stacked with a polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) solar cell is presented for 2.4/5.2 GHz band WLAN and 2.5/3.3/5.8 GHz band WiMAX networks. While the proposed self-complementary shaped multiple-L slot loaded suspended patch enables the propagation of multiple TM mn modes to be present, the poly-Si solar cell works as an RF parasitic patch element in addition to its photovoltaic function. The proposed stacked solar antenna combination topology enables the radiating patch to be easily modified by slot-loading to achieve multiband resonance characteristics and the poly-Si solar cell to operate without being shaded by any RF components of the antenna ensuring an optimum solar operation performance.