Design of Reflective Concentrator Model with Application for Concentrator Photovoltaic System

The nonuniform irradiation in the standard photovoltaic(PV) cells causes their relatively high series resistance,which results in a considerably lowered efficiency of PV cells.Currently the concentrator of uniform irradiation designed for concentrator photovoltaic is rare in China and lack sufficient theoretical research.In this paper,a systematic research on the solar reflective concentrator is conducted.A novel structure for a solar reflective concentrator is designed with the application of a flat mirror matrix to concentrate the sunlight for concentrator photovoltaic(CPV) systems.Sunlight beams are focused through the reflection of the mirror array on the solar cell to generate electricity.The concentrator is capable of producing much more uniform sunlight with a certain concentration ratio.The design scheme includes laying out the flat mirrors,optimizing the optical pathway and the parameters of each mirror.The prototype of the CPV system was installed at Nanjing,China.In the configuration of the prototype,it is composed of 24 pieces parallelogram flat mirrors,which are arranged into a total reflective array of 5 rows and 5 columns.In comparison with the parabolic trough concentrator,the experimental measurements verify such design has high efficiency.The concentrator model of a flat mirror matrix and the proposed new design method will lay a solid foundation for designing the concentrator of uniform irradiation.