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 80°. The acceptance angle can be increased from 0.5° of a system without the SOE to 1° by using one with 65° plate slope and 4 cm height and the optical efficiency was still over 50% at 1.9° 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.
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