Deciding between concentrated and non-concentrated photovoltaic systems via direct comparison of experiment with opto-thermal computation

Manoj Kumar Sharma and Jishnu Bhattacharya

Renewable Energy, 2021, vol. 178, issue C, 1084-1096

Abstract: Concentrated photovoltaic system provides higher efficiency at the expense of complexity and cost. A direct comparison in performance is made between concentrated and non-concentrated PV units. It is observed that a concentrated system outperforms, not for all, but only for a range of insolation. The range depends majorly on the relative difference between the conversion efficiencies of the PV materials. In-house experiments are performed to evaluate the performance metrics. A GaAs based concentrating PV module is characterized showing nominal efficiency and temperature coefficient to be 24.0% and −0.045%/°C, respectively. A Fresnel lens based tracked concentrator system is designed, fabricated and characterized under different DNI, ambient temperatures and operating cell temperatures (maintained by constant temperature coolant flow). An opto-thermal model, validated against the aforementioned experiments, is employed to make systematic comparison under different insolations. As for example, a CPV system (with CR = 90) with 40%-efficient cells outperforms an NCPV system with 25%-efficient cells only above DNI ∼630 W/m2. Exact value of the critical DNI depends on other operating conditions and effective conversion efficiencies. Here, the presumption of better performance of CPV system under all conditions is proven incorrect and a general methodology is provided for such an important design decision.

Keywords: Concentrating photovoltaics; Conventional photovoltaics; Fresnel lens; PV characterization; Sun tracking; PV temperature Regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148121009940
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:178:y:2021:i:c:p:1084-1096

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2021.06.128

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().