Solar Cells, 2nd Edition

Chapter IA-3

Ideal Efficiencies

Peter T. Landsberg^a and Tom Markvart^b

^aFaculty of Mathematical Studies, University of Southampton, UK

^bSchool of Engineering Sciences, University of Southampton, UK

Chapter Outline

1. Introduction

2. Thermodynamic Efficiencies

3. Efficiencies in Terms of Energies

4. Efficiencies Using the Shockley Solar Cell Equation

5. General Comments on Efficiencies

References

1 Introduction

In this chapter we deal with the simplest ideas that have been used in the past to attain an understanding of solar cell efficiencies from a theoretical point of view. The first and most obvious attack on this problem is to use thermodynamics, and we offer four such estimates in Section 2. Only the first of these is the famous Carnot efficiency. ...