State-of-the-art review of 3DPV technology: Structures and models

Abstract

Increasing energy conversion efficiency from sunlight to power is one of the key solutions for the world's energy shortage and greenhouse gas reduction, but the conventional flat photovoltaic module without sun tracking mechanism has the low sunlight energy collection ability. This paper presents the state-of-the-art three-dimensional photovoltaic (3DPV) technology with high photovoltaic energy conversion efficiency, which is able to absorb off-peak sunlight and reflected light more effectively, thereby it can generate more power. At first, this paper is to catalogue and critique different 3DPV structures and models, as well as assess their characteristics. Afterwards, the main influence factors on the 3DPV structures and models including shape, height and spacing of the solar cells, latitude of the installation, optimal device design and shadow cast, are reviewed. Finally, the challenges and future technological developments of 3DPV structures and models are highlighted. This study demonstrated that the 3DPV technology can increase the captured sunlight approximately 15-30% in comparison with the conventional flat PV technology.

Kirigami-inspired automatically self-inclining bifacial solar cell arrays to enhance energy yield under both sunny and cloudy conditions

“…The concepts proposed in Figure 1 to obtain maximal energy in both cases of direct illumination and scattered illumination conditions using bifacial solar cells are supported by the results of previous studies on monofacial solar cells and by the additional power gain of bifacial solar cells at various angles under different illumination conditions ( Younas et al., 2019 ; Yun et al., 2020 ; Raina et al., 2021 ; Bernardi et al., 2012 ; Cui et al., 2019 ; Huang et al., 2020 ). These previously reported results—where the angled alignment of monofacial modules or arrays has been shown to affect the energy yield and where a vertical array of PV modules has been shown to produce more energy under scattered light conditions such as cloudy days by capturing other forms of incident light—have been expanded in the present work to a bifacial solar cell to confirm the effect of its angled alignment under a scattered- and diffused-light environment ( Tayagaki and Yoshita, 2022 ; Yin et al., 2021 ).…”