Remote electric powering by germanium photovoltaic conversion of an Erbium-fiber laser beam

Abstract

The commercially available 4000-Watt continuous-wave (CW) Erbium-doped-fiber laser, emitting at the 1567-nm wavelength where the atmosphere has high transmission, provides an opportunity for harvesting electric power at remote “off the grid” locations using a multi-module photovoltaic (PV) “receiver” panel. This paper proposes a 32-element monocrystalline thick-layer Germanium PV panel for efficient harvesting of a collimated 1.13-m-diam beam. The 0.78-m² PV panel is constructed from commercial Ge wafers. For incident CW laser-beam power in the 4000 to 10,000 W range, our thermal, electrical, and infrared simulations predict 660 to 1510 Watts of electrical output at the panel temperatures of 350 to 423 K.