Marine environmental damage effects of solar cell panel

Solar cell is one of the crucial components in photovoltaic systems. At present, substrate crystalline silicon solar cells with clear cover glasses are widely used in photovoltaic systems. The solar panels are made of semiconducting materials including mono crystalline silicon, polycrystalline silicon and gallium arsenide (GaAs). The high transmittance glass cover is pressed together with the panel through silicone rubber, which provides a strong protection for the core solar cells. A key issue of the photovoltaic system is the photovoltaic conversion efficiency, which not only depends on the conversion efficiency of the semiconducting silicon, but also is closely related to the transmittance of the cover glass. The photovoltaic conversion efficiency will definitely reduce with the attenuation of spectral transmittance. The rigorous environment where the solar cells are used in, such as in space radiation, desert and marine environments, will cause contamination, corrosion, wear and deterioration of the optical properties of the glass cover. The results in this study show that the spectral transmittance of the cover glass decreases with the increase of the submerging time in seawater. Therefore, it is necessary to study the attenuation of the optical properties of the cover glass and to characterise surface damage. Progress in research on environmental damage effect of solar panels has been reviewed and presented in this paper. The future direction of the research in this field has also been explored.