Analysis and Design of Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

Dye sensitized solar cells (DSC) are an attractive alternative to the conventional photovoltaic cell because of their low cost electricity production from solar radiation. The advantages of a DSC include the ability to generate power without emitting pollutants and requiring no fuel. While modeling of the physical and transport phenomena in DSC has been widely reported in the literature, a thorough analysis to quantitatively determine the optimal design and operating configuration in installation is lacking. The present study incorporates a model of the DSC coupled with a model to predict global irradiance on a terrestrial surface to analyze the hourly, daily, monthly and annual performance of a DSC installation over a wide range of design and operating parameters. Optimum design and operating parameters are derived from the analysis.