High-efficiency solar energy conversion through flux concentration and spectrum splitting

Abstract

One technique that has been studied to improve the performance and reduce the cost of solar cell power supplies is to concentrate the solar flux, which increases the conversion efficiency slightly, and greatly reduces the necessary solar cell area, Another is to split the solar spectrum into bands and convert the energy in each band by a cell optimized for that band. Both of these techniques have practical difficulties, and it has not been established that either would be superior to the present conventional way of using solar cells. The combination of these two techniques has apparently not been studied. It is suggested that the combination would preserve the separate advantages of each technique and at the same time eliminate the worst of their practical difficulties.