A Novel Concentrator Photovoltaic (CPV) System with the Improvement of Irradiance Uniformity and the Capturing of Diffuse Solar Radiation

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) system with improved irradiation uniformity and system efficiency. CPV technology is very promising its for highly efficient solar energy conversion. A conventional CPV system usually uses only one optical component, such as a refractive Fresnel lens or a reflective parabolic dish, to collect and concentrate solar radiation on the solar cell surface. Such a system creates strongly non-uniform irradiation distribution on the solar cell, which tends to cause hot spots, current mismatch, and degrades the overall efficiency of the system. Additionally, a high-concentration CPV system is unable to collect diffuse solar radiation. In this paper, we propose a novel CPV system with improved irradiation uniformity and collection of diffuse solar radiation. The proposed system uses a Fresnel lens as a primary optical element (POE) to concentrate and focus the sunlight and a plano-concave lens as a secondary optical element (SOE) to uniformly distribute the sunlight over the surface of multi-junction (MJ) solar cells. By using the SOE, the irradiance uniformity is significantly improved in the system. Additionally, the proposed system also captures diffuse solar radiation by using an additional low-cost solar cell surrounding MJ cells. In our system, incident direct solar radiation is captured by MJ solar cells, whereas incident diffuse solar radiation is captured by the low-cost solar cell. Simulation models were developed using a commercial optical simulation tool (LightTools™). The irradiance uniformity and efficiency of the proposed CPV system were analyzed, evaluated, and compared with those of conventional CPV systems. The analyzed and simulated results show that the CPV system significantly improves the irradiance uniformity as well as the system efficiency compared to the conventional CPV systems. Numerically, for our simulation models, the designed CPV with the SOE and low-cost cell provided an optical power ratio increase of about 17.12% compared to the conventional CPV without the low-cost cell, and about 10.26% compared to the conventional CPV without using both the SOE and additional low-cost cell.

Special Issue on Advancing Grid-Connected Renewable Generation Systems

“…There are five papers focused on solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies-the first one by N. Tien and S. Shin introduced a novel concentrator PV system [6], which improves the irradiation uniformity and system efficiency. The second paper, authored by G. Brando, A. Dannier, A. Del Pizzo, and I. Spina, discusses the control and modulation techniques for a centralized PV system using interleaved inverters [7].…”

A Study on the Deformation Behavior of a Microstructure Depending on Its Shape and the Cutting Section in the Precision Cutting of a Functional Part

“…Optical lenses, biochips, and fuel cells, which are used as core components in various high-tech industries, are fabricated in a form that consists of a microstructure on the surface [1][2][3][4][5][6]. In particular, a head-up display device mounted on an aircraft or a vehicle, or a head-mounted display device for realizing a VR (virtual reality) and an AR (augmented reality) requires a high-performance lens.…”

“…Various materials such as aluminum, PMMA (poly methyl methacrylate), plated copper, and nickel are used as a work piece for precision machining [7,9,10,12]. In particular, metals have been used as molds for the lens with repeated micropatterns on their surface [6,9,18,19]. For instance, copper and 2 of 12 nickel have excellent optical and mechanical properties, and are widely used as lens mold materials.…”

Effect of the collector geometry in the concentrating photovoltaic thermal solar cell performance

“…Taking into account that the solar cells prices are still responsible for a great percentage of the overall costs related to conversion energy system, different techniques have been implemented to increase the solar energy production without the use of more solar cells. Example of this is the inclusion of reflector concentrators in the concentrating PV-thermal (C-PVT) collector to increase the solar irradiance in the solar cells [2,3]. This may have a higher importance in world regions where the average irradiation is low.…”