Reduced Silver Consumption for Optimized Performance of Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Devices Using the Configurable Current Cell Electrical Architecture

The continued reduction in the amount of silver used to decrease the cost of solar energy is applied to a novel grid finger screen printed metallization design. Improved solar cell and solar module performance metrics are increased while reducing the amount of metal needed per solar cell. Just as the current design of busbars has changed to incorporate segmented busbars, floating busbars or no busbars where a multi-wire module is used, the design of grid fingers needs to also evolve to eliminate redundant or unnecessary function within the solar cell device. Using a technology like the Configurable Current Cell that includes a modified "H-Bar" metallization pattern shown in this paper will provide additional methods to reduce the amount of metal needed on the front and rear of a solar cell to optimize the performance of a solar module.