Solar Cell Optimization by means of Metallic Nanodisks

In this paper the authors optimize the geometry of a solar cell with metallic nanodisks by employing a finite element code to solve the light scattering problem from the cell and genetic algorithm optimization

Multi-Objective Optimization of Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells with Metallic and Dielectric Nanoparticles

Thin-film solar cells enable a strong reduction of the amount of silicon needed to produce photovoltaic panels but their efficiency lowers. Placing metallic or dielectric nanoparticles over the silicon substrate increases the light trapping into the panel thanks to the plasmonic scattering from nanoparticles at the surface of the cell. The goal of this paper is to optimize the geometry of a thin-film solar cell with silver and silica nanoparticles in order to improve its efficiency, taking into account the amount of silver. An efficient evolutionary algorithm is applied to perform the optimization with a reduced computing time

Thin Conductor Modelling Combined with a Hybrid Numerical Method to Evaluate the Transferred Potential from Isolated Grounding System

Grounding systems are essential parts of substations and power generation stations. The evaluation of transferred potentials from an active grounding system to other passive ones or to any near conductors is an important aspect to be considered, because transferred potentials may cause serious and fatal events. Moreover, it is an intrinsic issue of the Smart Grid where the ground systems of the power and ICT systems could be close to each other. Therefore, the estimation of the transferred potential is necessary at grounding system design stage for people safety and electric components safeguard. Numerical methods are the best choice to perform a truthful estimation, especially when large and complex grounding systems have to be designed. However, this task is complicated by the “unbounded„ nature of the electromagnetic field and by the presence of components of extremely different size in the analysis domain. In this paper, an efficient hybrid finite element method is applied for the accurate and fast computation of transferred earth potentials from grounding systems. Moreover, the small dimensions of the components in the analysis domain are taken into account by the use of one-dimensional finite elements inserted in the tetrahedral mesh. It is worth mentioning the additional advantage of obtaining the electric potential on the earth surface without any post-processing operation

The Hybrid FEM-DBCI for the Solution of Open-Boundary Low-Frequency Problems

This paper describes a particular use of the hybrid FEM-DBCI, for the computation of low-frequency electromagnetic fields in open-boundary domains. Once the unbounded free space enclosing the system has been truncated, the FEM is applied to the bounded domain thus obtained, assuming an unknown Dirichlet condition on the truncation boundary. An integral equation is used to express this boundary condition in which the integration surface is selected in the middle of the most external layer of finite elements, very close to the truncation boundary, so that the integral equation becomes quasi-singular. The method is described for the computation of electrostatic fields in 3D and of eddy currents in 2D, but it is also applicable to the solution of other kinds of electromagnetic problems. Comparisons are made with other methods, concluding that FEM-DBCI is competitive with the well-known FEM-BEM and coordinate transformations for what concerns accuracy and computing time