Temperature Dependent Measurement And Simulation Of Fresnel Lenses For Concentrating Photovoltaics

Concentrating photovoltaics (CPV) require large areas of optical components that concentrate incident sunlight effectively onto a solar cell. Fresnel lenses are often used as primary optical component providing this concentration. When applied in the field, varying conditions during operation lead to variations in lens temperature which has a strong impact on the optical efficiency of the lenses. A setup for indoor characterization with the ability to heat lens plates allows for the assessment of the quality of Fresnel lenses by means of their irradiance profiles in the focal plane. To analyze the measured temperature dependency we simulate thermal deformations of the lens geometry with finite element method (FEM) tools and use the resulting lens geometry as an input to ray tracing simulations. We performed high accuracy measurements of the temperature and wavelength dependent refractive indices of relevant lens materials to obtain additional input data for computer simulations. A close match between comp...