Design And Experimental Investigation Of Static-Concentrator Photovoltaic System

Traditional fossil fuel is being used up, and it brings serious pollution to environment, so there have trend that new energy sources will replace fossil fuel. Solar PV(photovoltaic) is one of the most popular new energy sources. The price of PV is higher than thermal power generation, so it hasn’t been widely used, only with the allowance from government, its price is equal to thermal power generation. To solve this problem, we try to design a static concentrator PV to reduce the price of crystalline sillicon panel PV which is occuping the highest level of market; and make a contribution to PV industry.Our main idea is using crystalline sillicon PV which is occuping the highest level of market as electricity generation unit, and using line-focus Fresnel lens which is redesigned as solar concentrator. Because the price of crystalline sillicon cell is very high, so if we guide a large area of sunshine to a small area of crystalline sillicon cell, we can reduce the amount of solar cell to cut down the price of PV system.Main content in this paper include: 1. Select a suitable concentration ratio of crystalline sillicon cell. One the one hand, the price of PV system will still be high if concentration ratio is too small; one the other hand, if concentration ratio is too high, there will be light saturation in solar cell, and the solar cell will become very hot, it will reduce the power conversion efficiency and even the life of cell. 2. Design of line-focus Fresnel lens. The light spot from traditional line-focus Fresnel lens is not well-distributed, its middle is bright, but its both sides is dull, so the solar cell can’t reach the optimal working condition. Meanwhile, if you stand on a fixed place to observe the sun, its dirtion is changeable along with the time, in daytime, the trajectory of sun is an arc, so the solar concentrator should have ability to receive the sunshine from a big angle scope. We did the corresponding analysis to maximize the collection angle of solar concentrator. 3. From the results of theoretical analysis, we made lenses, crystalline sillicon cells and frameworks and then, tested the performance of the system.Our research methods include theoretical analysis, optical simulations and practical tests. We come up with two methods to improve the distribution of light spot which is from line-focus Fresnel lens. The concequences from theoretical analysis, optical simulations and practical tests prove that our methods can improve the light spot distribution significantly, and the lens has ability to collect the sunshine from the big angle scope. So our work can be used in actual PV projects and our work is useful to the similar design work.