Biasing conditions for measurement of Quantum Efficiency of a solar cell in a module

Establishing short circuit condition for a cell in a module is an essential prerequisite for measuring the quantum efficiency of a solar cell. A PV module consists of cells in series and also has bypass diodes across strings. To measure the quantum efficiency of a cell (target cell) it is necessary to shade the cell so that it acts as a current limiting cell. In this paper, we use a PSpice model of a PV module. By using current voltage characteristics of the module, we evolve at a methodology to determine the applied bias to bring the target cell to short circuit condition. These simulation results are compared with experimental results obtained on a solar simulator of a 60 cell solar module having bypass diodes.