Computational Analysis and Experimental Investigation of Optical Efficiency of Concentrating Photovoltaics equipped with a Secondary Optic Element
Conference proceedings article
Authors/Editors
Strategic Research Themes
No matching items found.
Publication Details
Author list: Patanasemakul N., Rakkwamsuk P., Chuangchote S., Songprakorp R., Kirtikara K.
Publisher: Elsevier
Publication year: 2017
Volume number: 138
Start page: 604
End page: 609
Number of pages: 6
ISSN: 1876-6102
eISSN: 1876-6102
Languages: English-Great Britain (EN-GB)
View in Web of Science | View on publisher site | View citing articles in Web of Science
Abstract
A concentrating photovoltaic system offers high efficiency but limited by its low acceptance angle. This paper presents a method to increase an acceptance angle of a Fresnel lens system by adding a flat plate reflector as a secondary optic element (SOE) at the edge of a receiver. Two-dimension (2D) ray tracing simulations using MATLAB and the optical characteristics of the flat plate reflector are explained. The simulations of a system using Fresnel lens with 14.5 cm diameter and 19 cm focal length were made by varying the SOE plate slope from 50 to 80ฐ. The acceptance angle can be increased from 0.5ฐ of a system without the SOE to 1ฐ by using one with 65ฐ plate slope and 4 cm height and the optical efficiency was still over 50% at 1.9ฐ incident angle. The experimental results showed that improvement of an acceptance angle could significantly increase power gain of a CPV system operating under tropical skies in Thailand by 10-20%. In addition, placing a receiver at an off-focal point could improve radiation uniformity and PV's fill factor. ฉ 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords
Concentrating systems, Fresnel lens, Secondary optic
Contact Information