Thermal Management Strategy of Photoelectric System of Sunlight Concentrating Space Solar Power Station

Abstract

There will be serious thermal problems in the photovoltaic system of sunlight-concentrating space solar power station (SSPS), which will reduce the conversion efficiency of the photovoltaic system and overall energy transmission of the whole system. In this paper, based on the thermal problems in the optoelectronic system of SSPS via Orb-shape Membrane Energy Gathering Array (SSPS-OMEGA), a thermal management strategy of full-spectrum selective photonic thin-film based on the photoelectric characteristics of photovoltaic cells and pump-driven fluid flow loop is proposed with combination of passive and active cooling methods. Simulation results indicate that the full-spectrum selective thin film can significantly reduce the parasitic heat source in ultraviolet band and sub-band gap, from 205 to 72.8 W/m² and from 46 to 4.5 W/m², respectively. Meanwhile, it can effectively increase the emissivity from 0.84 to 0.938. On the other hand, the pump-driven fluid flow loop is designed and the temperature of the PV cell array is well controlled below 50 ℃ for ground-based demonstration validation system of the SSPS-OMEGA project. Finally, a simple experiment investigation is carried out demonstrate the thermal control performance of pump-driven fluid flow loop for photoelectric system.