An Improved Light Source Using Filtered Tungsten Lamps as an Affordable Solar Simulator for Testing of Photovoltaic Cells

An improved Tungsten light source system for photo voltaic cell testing constructed from low-cost, commercially available materials is presented as an alternative to current high-cost solar simulators. In this work, spectral correction of the Tungsten light source is achieved by increasing the colour temperature to ~5200 K using inexpensive commercially available filters. Spectral measurements of the corrected light source reveal that a better spectrum match towards the solar spectrum is achieved than what has been previously demonstrated by our team. Specifically, the improved solar spectrum match is achieved by substantial filtering of the infrared range. The proposed setup is used to evaluate the performance of both silicon and organic based solar cells.