How might solar panel performance be enhanced by half-cut solar cells?

1.Reduce resistance loss

When solar cells convert sunlight into electricity, the power loss mainly comes from the loss of resistance or the loss in the current transmission process.

Solar cells transmit current through thin metal bands across their surfaces and connect them to adjacent wires and batteries, causing some energy loss when the current passes through these metal bands.

The solar cell sheet is cut in half, thus halving the current generated by each cell, and as the current flows through the cells and wires in the solar panel, the lower current flow leads to lower resistance losses. Thus, the power loss of the component is reduced and its function is better.

2.Higher shading tolerance

The half-cut cell is less affected by shadow occlusion than the whole cell. This is not due to the battery being cut in half, but due to the different wiring methods used to connect the half-cut battery in the assembly.

In the photovoltaic panel of the full-size battery sheet, the battery is connected together in the form of rows, which is called series wiring. In a series wiring scheme, if a cell is obscured and does not produce energy, the entire row of cells in series will stop generating power.

For example, a conventional solar module has 3 battery strings, each with a bypass diode. If one of the battery strings does not generate power because one of the cells is blocked, then for the entire component, that is, 1/3 of the cells stop working.

On the other hand, the half-cut cells are also connected in series, but since components made of half-cut cells have twice the number of cells (120 instead of 60), the number of individual rows also doubles.

This type of wiring allows components with half-cut cells to lose less power when one cell is blocked, since a single blocked cell can only eliminate one-sixth of the power output of the component.

The reason is because the half-cut solar module has 6 separate battery strings (but only 3 bypass diodes), providing better local shadow tolerance. If half of the component is obscured by a shadow, the other half can still continue to operate.

3.Reduce the damage of heat spots to components

When one solar cell in a module battery string is shielded, all the previous unshielded cells can pour the energy they produce into the shielded cell as heat, which forms a heat spot that can cause damage to the solar module if it lasts for a long time.

For components with half cut cells, the double string of cells shares the heat poured on the blocked cell, so the damage to the module from less heat pouring is also reduced, which can improve the solar panel damage caused by heat spots.