Orthogonal and secondary concentration in planar micro-optic solar collectors

Abstract

Planar micro-optic concentrators are passive optical structures which combine a lens array with faceted microstructures to couple sunlight into a planar slab waveguide. Guided rays propagate within the slab to edge-mounted photovoltaic cells. This paper provides analysis and preliminary experiments describing modifications and additions to the geometry which increase concentration ratios along both the vertical and orthogonal waveguide axes. We present simulated results for a 900x concentrator with 85% optical efficiency, measured results for small-scale experimental systems and briefly discuss implementations using low-cost fabrication on continuous planar waveguides.

Spectral beam splitting for efficient conversion of solar energy—A review

“…Moving parts should be minimised as much as possible. A possible solution to address these challenges is using planar concentrators [55][56][57][58] or an array of small concentrating devices combined with spectral splitters [59][60][61][62] (Fig. 5).…”

Waveguide solar concentrator design with spectrally separated light

“…The strategies to convert incident angles to total internal reflection (TIR) allowing light propagation through the waveguide are various. Lets cite: Tapered concentrator (Park et al, 2010), backlight concentrator (Ming-Chin et al, 2009), luminescent concentrator (Goldschmidt et al, 2009b;Li et al, 2016;van Sark et al, 2008) and micro-optics waveguided concentrator (Karp et al, 2011;Peng et al, 2014).…”

A Large Scale Daylighting System Based on a Stepped Thickness Waveguide

“…The utilization of a waveguide as a solar concentrator is quite new, and originally came from the design of a planar concentrator [18] combined with backlighting [19]. In this case, the sunlight, concentrated by an array of lenses, was coupled into a slab waveguide using specular reflections from an associate area of prism facets fabricated at each lens focus [20]. This approach is able to reduce the complexity of optical fiber daylighting systems through a more robust concentration.…”