Application Development with Finite Element Method to Calculate Photogeneration Rate and Open-Circuit Voltage of Dye Sensitized Solar Cell

Abstract

Amongst the several alternative resources, renewable energy source (RES) can provide continuous and clean energy. Furthermore, RESs have received a worldwide attention and an outstanding role is attributed to them. The sun energy can be exploited using light energy conversion applications such as photovoltaics. Dye Sensitized Solar Cell (DSSC) is third-generation photovoltaic device and a forwardlooking, easily producible solar cell. Nevertheless, buying a commercially available DSSC, datasheet and material information are unavailable. Thus, the purchased DSSC is a black box. The main motivation is that to develop a MatLab application which is able to determine the material information and parameters of the Dye Sensitized Solar Cell from some incoming parameters. The goal of the study is to describe the peration of the developed MatLab application which calculated the photogeneration rate in function of the thickness of the cell, the open-circuit voltage, and to illustrate its operation via an example. The photogeneration rate is solved using the numerical finite element method as a numerical procedure. In our model the Beer-Lambert law is implemented. The model takes into consideration the measured parameters of the light such as photoncount-wavelength spectrum, transmissionwavelength spectrum and irradiation intensity-wavelength spectrum. Furthermore, the open-circuit voltage is an elementary electric parameter of a solar cell.