Modeling the I-V and luminescence characteristics of solar cell cracks using Griddler

This work investigates a procedure for modeling solar cell cracks using Griddler and assesses its viability to generate artificial current-voltage (I-V) and electroluminescence (EL) data of solar cell cracks that can be used to train fault detection algorithms, as degradation data cannot easily be acquired in the field and is cumbersome to obtain in the laboratory. The solar cell cracks are modeled on the I-V characteristics curve parameters obtained at Standard Test Conditions (STC) within 5 % of error for solar cells with different numbers of busbars. The match between the simulated and measured I-V characteristic curves is evaluated at different irradiance levels: the calculated root mean square deviation (RMSD) at 1-Sun is below 0.05 for both the healthy and cracked solar cells. In addition, EL images are simulated at I<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">SC</inf> and 10 % I<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">SC</inf> for both healthy and cracked solar cells. The statistical parameters of the simulated and measured EL intensity distributions are compared: the standard deviation is within 10 % of difference at I<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">SC</inf> (i.e. the variability in the EL intensities is comparable).