Impact of the Spectrum in the Annual Energy Production of Multijunction Solar Cells

In this work, we study the limiting efficiency of the annual energy production of multijunction solar cells both as independently connected (MJSC-IC) and as series connected (MJSC-SC). Our calculations take into account the impact of hourly and daily variations of the solar spectrum and the geographical latitude. The results confirm the lower dependence with the solar spectrum of independently connected MJSCs and suggest that, in order to progress in practice toward higher annual energy production efficiencies, it could be advisable to develop a 5-junction MJSC-IC rather than to increase the number of solar cells from 5 to 6 under the MJSC-SC approach.