Design, fabrication, and measurement of a polymer-based anti-reflection coating for improved performance of a solar panel under a specific incident angle

Solar panels are usually covered with anti-reflection coatings (ARCs) that operate optimally for normal light incidence. Thus, ARCs effectiveness declines with increasing incident angles. In this contribution, we propose and design a polymer-based ARC that can be customized to operate optimally under a specific incident angle. It finds its application in building-applied photovoltaic (BAPV) and building-integrated PV (BIPV) systems where solar panels are installed on various building facets at arbitrary angles. A sample of the designed coating is fabricated using Polyurethane (PU) as a transparent polymer in a low-cost process. Our experiments show a 5.6% enhancement in the real outdoor conversion efficiency of a glass-covered Si solar cell equipped with the designed ARC under the targeted incident angle, wherein it is compared with a case in which our designed ARC is substituted by a plain PU-based sheet ARC of an equal thickness.