Multicell Design for Concentrated Photovoltaic (CPV) Module

Abstract

Despite its highest efficiency, concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) technology is still find - ing its way into the current photovoltaic market which is saturated with conventional flat-plate photovoltaic systems. CPV systems have a great performance potential as they utilize third-generation multi-junction solar cells. In the CPV system, the main aspect is its concentrating assembly design which affects not only its overall performance but also its operation and fabrication. Conventional CPV design targets to use individual solar concentrator for each solar cell. The main motivation of this chapter is to propose a novel concentrating assembly design for CPV that is able to handle multiple solar cells, with out affecting their size, using single solar concentrator. Such proposed design, named as multicell concentrating assembly (MCA), will not only reduce the assembly efforts during CPV module fabrication, but it will also lower the overall system cost with simpli - fied design. In this chapter, a detailed design methodology of multicell concentrating assembly (MCA) for CPV module is presented and developed with complete verification through ray tracing simulation and field experimentation.