Investigating PV-battery 3-terminal Integration Concept as a Self-sustaining Power Solution

We present here the performance analysis of PV-battery 3-terminal integration concept. In this arrangement, a PV device is integrated monolithically with a battery stack separated only by a common contact layer which makes the use of a control electronic e.g. a DC-DC converter possible. The concept is a versatile power solution for self-sustained operation of small-scale electronics. In this work we investigate this concept by using thinfilm multi-junction solar cell to directly charge a Li battery with the aid of a control electronic. Operation of the PV-battery combination with and without charge controller is analyzed under standard AM1.5 illumination.