As a result of the presentations during the workshop and the subsequent discussion, the participants have agreed the following conclusions: • Present solar cells are not likely to reach a cost that will allow penetration of the PV electricity market because, in their present form—with poor utilization of the solar spectrum—they make ineffective use of […]

We will formally prove with the model presented in section 13.1.5 that for cells whose grid-line series resistance is negligible, when the local concentration distribution is assumed to vary slowly between the grid-lines, the distribution providing maximum cell efficiency is the uniform one. Let us consider the cell model presented in section 13.1.5. In the […]

The recent progresses in non-imaging optics research are focused on to designs in 3D geometry. The interest in 3D designs for PVs lies in the potential capability of 3D methods to obtain practical solutions close to the optimum PV concentrator performance, defined in section 13.1.6. Not only do 2D designs not control most of the […]

Using the SMS method to design concentrators has produced new families during the last decade [35]. Among them, several families (RR [30], RR-RRIF [30,36], XR [30], XXf [37]], SMTS [38], DSMTS [6], RXI [39], RXIf [40], RXI-RX [40], TIR-R [41]) have been suggested for PV applications. The nomenclature used for referring to the different designs […]

13.2.1 Classical concentrators The progress in solar cells development since its invention has been huge. The investment needed has also been important. Present cells have become much more efficient and the technology much more advanced. The next-generation approaches discussed in this book try to further cell development, increasing cell sophistication if necessary. However, PV concentrator […]

Non-imaging optics (also called anidolic optics) is the branch of optics that deals with maximum efficiency power transfer from a light source to a receiver [], and, thus, it is the best framework for PV concentrator design. The term non-imaging comes from the fact that for achieving high efficiency the image formation condition is not […]

Equation (13.1) showed that if a high concentration is needed to reduce the receiver cost and a sufficiently high acceptance angle a is needed to make the system practical, the illumination angles в on the receiver must, of necessity, be high. A first consequence of illuminating the cell with wide angles в is that such […]

It is well known that non-uniform illumination of solar cells under high concentration may decrease the power output significantly. For the concentrator designer, the key question is what local concentration distribution can be considered good enough for a given cell. Usually, the only information available for concentrator designers is the cell efficiency under uniform illumination […]