Design and Analysis of a Low Reflecting Concentrating Photovoltaic System

In this paper, a concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) system with low ratio was successfully developed. In the design of CPV concentrator, a quasi-parabolic reflector was adopted. With the research of basic optical mechanisms, a mathematic model was built with the corresponding program. In addition, the width of light spot was analyzed with considering the symmetry of tracking errors and glass deformation in manufacture to identify reasonable values. The system was designed with a reflector of 10 flat mirrors, which has a geometrical concentration ratio of 8.18 and a flux concentration ratio of 5. The concentrating photovoltaic system was investigated experimentally under the various weather conditions. The output voltage profile and the output power of the flat PV system and the CPV system were presented to analyze the concentration ratio and the electric power. And the influence of soiling was also discussed. The results showed that the performance of tracking system was good in a clear day. Compared to the flat cell with the same system, the electric power was nearly increased by 4-5 times.