Effect of Atmospheric Parameters on the Thermal Runaway in Concentrator III–V Multi-junction Solar Cells

In this paper a thermal runaway model with temperature dependence of the diode behaviour in parallel connection CPV modules is initially developed. Based on this model, the influence of atmospheric parameters such as air mass (AM) and aerosol optical depth (AOD) on the thermal runaway effect in CPV modules has been analyzed. It is shown that under AM1.5D irradiance the concentration factor should be limited to 838 to prevent the steep temperature increases above 20 K when the number of solar cells connected in parallel is 2. The maximum number of parallel connected solar cells depending on the concentration ratio under different atmospheric parameters is also determined to avoid the strong temperature increases and thermal runaways in the CPV module.