Characterization of optical ageing effects on Ruthenium based Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

The renewable energy industry has been growing remarkably over the last years and, in this context, solar radiation represents one of the most accessible energy resources. The involved industry has seen rapid expansion in the past decade with an ever-increasing share of the electricity-generating capacity for the world. To this aim, for the photovoltaic (PV) manufactures, the assessment of the reliability and electrical performances of their prototypes is becoming more and more important, especially for third generation solutions such as Ruthenium based Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs). In particular, this paper aims to analyze ageing effects on DSSCs under optical stress. The study is divided in two parts: in the first part we use accelerated optical stress to understand mechanisms degradation of DSSC parameters as efficiency, open circuit voltage and short circuit current. In the second part we submit the DSSCs to Sun exposition in order to study cells in realistic operative conditions. © 2014 IEEE.