Molded glass arrays for micro-CPV applications with very good performance

Jost, Norman; Vallerotto, Guido; Tripoli, Alessandro; L'Eprevier, Bertrand de; Domínguez, César; Askins, Stephen; Antón, Ignacio

doi:10.1063/5.0032327

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 6 publications

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“…A metallic plate and stamp are compressed with the viscose material in between for structuring the part. Used for aspheric glass or PMMA lens arrays or single Fresnel lenses; [126,127] 5) Roller UV-E: UV-curable resins are structured by a roller mold and progressively cured. Roll-to-roll or roll-to-plate can be used.…”

Section: Reflectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated Micro‐Scale Concentrating Photovoltaics: A Scalable Path Toward High‐Efficiency, Low‐Cost Solar Power

Jost

Juejun

et al. 2023

Solar RRL

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The global energy market is seeing increases in the electricity demand of a couple of percentage points annually. The photovoltaic (PV) industry is also growing rapidly every year. One of the PV technologies is concentrator photovoltaics (CPV). CPV uses high‐efficiency multijunction solar cells and optics to concentrate sunlight, thereby significantly reducing the amount of semiconductor material needed. Yet, due to the high upfont manufacturing cost of CPV, it currently does not offer a competitive price against silicon PV. With this a new branch is introduced to the industry, micro‐CPV, which can be broadly explained as the miniaturization of the solar cells and optical components. The motivation for micro‐CPV is lowering the cost by decreasing the material volume and enabling new system architectures and high‐throughput manufacturing methods, while still maintaining high electrical efficiencies, taking advantage of a lower thermal load, shorter optical paths, lower resistive losses, and lower material volumes. Herein, a comprehensive review of the technological advances is presented, key synergies between micro‐CPV and other industries sharing similar challenges are identified, exemplified by micro‐light emitting diodes display manufacturing. New assembly process development in these industries will facilitate commercial adoption of micro‐CPV with continued miniaturization while driving down the cost.

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Section: Reflectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated Micro‐Scale Concentrating Photovoltaics: A Scalable Path Toward High‐Efficiency, Low‐Cost Solar Power

Jost

Juejun

et al. 2023

Solar RRL

Self Cite

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Roll-to-roll nanoimprint lithography of high efficiency Fresnel lenses for micro-concentrator photovoltaics

Jacobo-Martín¹,

Jost

Hernández³

et al. 2021

Opt. Express

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Roll-to-roll nanoimprint lithography (R2R-NIL) is an enabling technology for the low-cost mass production of high-quality micro- and nano-sized optical elements. Particularly, the fabrication of Fresnel lenses using R2R-NIL is a promising approach to produce optical arrays for micro-concentrator photovoltaic modules. This work investigates the application of a continuous R2R imprinting process based on ultraviolet curing of transparent photopolymer resins (UV-NIL) to fabricate high-efficiency and low-cost Fresnel lenses. The morphological attributes and the related optical performance of the lenses fabricated using roll-to-roll UV-NIL on flexible PET sheets yielded optical efficiency values up to ∼ 69% at a concentration ratio of 178X, whereas a value of ∼ 77% was obtained for the UV-NIL batch processed on a flat rigid substrate. Further improvement of the optical efficiency has been achieved by adding moth-eye inspired antireflective (AR) features on the side opposite to the Fresnel motifs via a double-sided R2R UV-NIL process. The process developed paves the way for cost-effective mass production of high-efficiency Fresnel lenses for micro-concentrator photovoltaics.

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Optimal Strategy for the Improvement of the Overall Performance of Dual-Axis Solar Tracking Systems

et al. 2021

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Solar Tracking Systems are useful to increase the generation efficiency of photovoltaic technology, mainly for concentration technology, where dual-axis is required on account of the high accurate alignment to the Sun. Even when there exists a strong relation between tracking error and energy efficiency, multiple technological and research developments have sought to solve these problems independently. The present research proposes a novel concurrent design methodology for optimizing the overall performance of two-axis trackers, allowing to keep a balance between the tracking error and the energy consumption from the design stage, from an optimization approach. The concurrent approach was implemented to design a Solar Tracker as a solar monitoring system, was compared with four commercial systems, obtaining a similar pointing accuracy with a mixed tracking error of 0.0942°. The system has the best energy balance, consuming only 0.9641% of the energy generated for the tracking action, below commercial models. Finally, a CO2 impact analysis was carried out, where the proposed tracker obtained the lowest value, with 25.7018 g. The results support the developed concurrent strategy for the optimization of the overall performance of dual-axis systems, allowing us to find a harmonic balance between the energy consumption and the required tracking accuracy.

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Molded glass arrays for micro-CPV applications with very good performance

Cited by 3 publications

References 6 publications

Integrated Micro‐Scale Concentrating Photovoltaics: A Scalable Path Toward High‐Efficiency, Low‐Cost Solar Power

Integrated Micro‐Scale Concentrating Photovoltaics: A Scalable Path Toward High‐Efficiency, Low‐Cost Solar Power

Roll-to-roll nanoimprint lithography of high efficiency Fresnel lenses for micro-concentrator photovoltaics

Optimal Strategy for the Improvement of the Overall Performance of Dual-Axis Solar Tracking Systems

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