Rectifying structural deflection effect of large solar concentrator via correction of sun-tracking angle in the concentrator photovoltaic system

Abstract

The influence of self-weight structural deflection of large solar concentrator has caused significant impact to the quality of concentrated solar flux. The resulted negative outcomes from structural deflection, including image distortion and pointing error, can deteriorate the electrical power generated by dense-array concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) module located at the target of large solar concentrator. In this article, a novel corrective measure for sun-tracking angle is proposed to rectify the structural deflection effect on the large solar concentrator and hence to optimize the electrical output power of dense-array CPV module. The methodology of the proposed corrective measure has been formulated and discussed in details using numerical simulation via ray-tracing technique. The simulated result has shown that the proposed method is proficient to recover the deviated and distorted solar flux distribution in the receiver without affecting the maximum solar concentration ratio and hence to reduce the electrical power loss. For the overall gain, the maximum output power has been increased from 3562W to 4030W and the electrical power loss has been reduced from 12.4% to 0.8% at elevation angle of 60° in the dense-array CPV system.