Effect of edge shading on the performance of silicon solar cell

Non-uniform solar radiation incident on solar cells is of significant concern in cell performance. It may result in non-uniform cell local heating and borders de-activation. Edge shading is a problem occurring in photovoltaic concentrator systems, due to tracking low accuracy and misalignment. An increase in both open circuit voltage and fill factor resulted from shading the edges of the cell by opaque frames of different widths. On the contrary, short circuit current density showed a drop by introducing such frames, illustrating that cell shading is responsible for the formation of series and parallel sub-cells operating at different operating conditions.