Silicon carbide is seen as a potent material for high power, high temperature and harsh environment applications. However the commercial use of SiC devices is greatly restricted by the immature process technology and wafer quality deficiencies. While the most degrading micropipe defects have been significantly reduced in number, other defect types like the closed core screw dislocations continue to contaminate SiC devices in large quantities. The effects of these defects on the quality and performance of SiC devices is under study. This paper models the presence of embedded structural defects in SiC PN junction diodes. The defects are presented as parallel diodes to the "ideal" ones with areas correspondingly reduced. "Defect" diodes are shown to turn on earlier to the "ideal" ones giving an anomalous bump in the initial part of forward I-V curves.