Abstract:
As a renewable energy source, solar power is becoming one of the most important
promising energy sources in the modern era. In past two decades, many researches on
operational principle of photovoltaic (PV) devices and their power generation efficiencies
have greatly increased over the world. And also, there is an enormous trend towards the
field of solar energies in Sri Lanka as well. Manufactures in this particular field under
standard test condition predict the temperature coefficient of power generation efficiency
designated by is approximately 0.41% per Celsius. But as usual, it changes under
realistic environmental conditions. Quantitatively finding the influence of temperature on
the power generation efficiency of polycrystalline silicon solar cells by the sensor
monitoring system under realistic environment conditions is the main aim of this research
study. Accordingly, the temperature and the total output power of the polycrystalline
silicon solar cells were simultaneously measured to analyse the effect of temperature on
the photovoltaic characteristics of solar cells under these circumstances. The temperature
coefficient of power generation efficiency with +0.0004% per Celsius has been observed
for these solar devices at Hambantota Solar Power Plant.
