Development of a Fresnel lens concentrator for space application

The selected conceptual design of the dome lens photovoltaic concentrator for space applications uses a 3.7 cm square aperture dome lens to focus onto a 0.4 cm active diameter gallium arsenide cell. The selected configuration will provide 91.5 percent lens optical efficiency and 21.4 percent cell efficiency at 100 suns irradiance and 100 C cell temperature, for an overall cell efficiency of 19.6 percent. The selected configuration will tolerate 1 degree tracking errors with negligible loss of performance. The selected panel weight is 2.5 kg/sq.m.