Efficiency of Solar Concentrators
Efficiency of Solar Concentrators
Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy
h i g h l i g h t s
g r a p h i c a l a b s t r a c t
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 21 June 2014
Received in revised form 12 January 2015
Accepted 23 January 2015
Available online 2 March 2015
Keywords:
Photovoltaic concentrator (CPV)
Dense-array receiver
Numerical optimization
Optical design
Zernike polynomials
a b s t r a c t
We present a general method, based on controlled static aberrations induced in the reectors, to boost
receiver performances in solar concentrators. Imaging mirrors coupled with dense arrays suffer from severe performance degradation since the solar irradiance distribution is bell-shaped: mismatch losses occur
in particular when the cells are series connected. The method consists in computing static deformations
of the reecting surfaces that can produce, for an adopted concentration ratio, a light spot matching the
receiver features better than conventional reectors. The surfaces and the deformations have been
analytically described employing the Zernike polynomials formalism. The concept here described can
be applied to a variety of optical congurations and collecting areas. As an example, we extensively investigated a dense array photovoltaic concentrator, dimensioned for a nominal power of about 10 kWe. The
at distribution of light we obtain can exploit the PV device cells close to their efciency limit. A signicant gain is thus obtained, with no need of secondary optics or complex dish segmentation and of special features in the receiver electrical scheme. In the design, based on seven 2.6 m mirrors, we addressed
also non-optical aspects as the receiver and the supporting mechanics. Optical and mechanical tolerances
are demonstrated not to exceed accurate, but conventional, industrial standards.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: alessandra.giannuzzi@unibo.it (A. Giannuzzi).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2015.01.085
0306-2619/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
212
1. Introduction
Concentrating Photovoltaics technology (CPV) is experiencing a
growing interest thanks to the development of solar cells with
continuously improved efciency. At present, the best reported cell
is a 0.165 cm2 multi-junction (MJ) cell having a new record of
44.4% conrmed efciency at direct irradiance concentration of
302 suns (1 sun = 1000 W/m2) [1]. For both high concentration
(HCPV) and low concentration (LCPV) systems the yearly installed
capacity increased signicantly during the last ve years [2].
A simple advantage induced by this technology is that, given the
collected energy, the concentration performed by optical devices
such as lenses or mirrors allows us to replace the area of photovoltaic material with cheaper optical surfaces. Moreover, high efciency cells are too expensive to be used in non-concentrating
applications. Despite most of the installed systems are point focus
lens based as Fresnel [36] or micro-dish [79] systems, dense
array systems have been recently investigated as protable solutions for lowering the cost per watt-peak supplied [10,11]. In this
technology the light is focused using one large reective element
called dish, onto an array of photovoltaic MJ cells densely packed
to form a single detector. If compared with lenses, mirrors have
the main advantage to not suffer from chromatic aberrations.
These systems track the sun in two-axis during its daily motion
and usually operate in high concentration mode, i.e. with solar ux
up to hundreds times the ambient value. Reective dish concentrators with diameters ranging from few meters to few tens of meters
have been already proposed and are at the beginning of their commercial development working at typical concentrations of 500
[1214].
Traditional dish concentrators have paraboloidal shapes.
Theoretically, their diameters could reach several tens of meters
as the heliostats in central tower plants, the construction of monolithic mirrors being difcult at these scales. The size generally
imposes to approximate the proles with cheap at reecting
facets mounted on a common frame and reproducing globally
the paraboloidal surface. As for the receivers, standard cells have
rectangular shapes and the arrays are groups of cells densely
packed together mostly in series and parallels connections. The
arrays do consequently resemble rectangular shapes too. When a
standard imaging mirror that produces a sun image intrinsically
circular is coupled with a rectangular detector problems arise. In
this condition some cells could be obscured if the spot is smaller
than the receiver, or part of the light could be lost if the detector
is smaller than the spot, these two effects contributing to a substantial loss in efciency. Moreover, the given irradiance distribution is bell-shaped in contrast with the requirement of having all
the cells under the same illumination. In fact, interconnected cells
having identical electrical characteristics and experiencing the
same irradiance/temperature conditions produce the same amount
of output current and voltage. Mismatch losses occur instead when
interconnected cells experience different conditions, in particular
for series connections. Still few investigations have been specically performed on current mismatches in dense array receivers
exposed to high concentrations [1517]. The issue of spatial light
uniformity is instead widely known for single cell devices [18
21] and the problem is commonly approached by the introduction
of secondary optics (SO) [2224] working as homogenizers. The
presence of an extra secondary optics is rather useful to increase
the acceptance angle leading to a relaxation of tracking and alignment tolerances. However, this solution has the disadvantage to
increase the system complexity and to add reection losses, chromatic aberration (if refractive) and mechanical problems as alignment, stability or mounting. A useful review on the state of the art
of the nonuniformity problem for single cell receivers has been
recently published [25]. Few commercial systems and technical
2. Optical concept
From an optical point of view there is no need for an accurate
image at the receiver of a solar concentrator. The optical design criteria rather concern with the optimal transfer of light between the
source and the target chosen. To solve matching issues in concentrators we thought to reinterpret optical concepts largely used in
astronomy, where an accurate image formation is an essential premise for efcient observations. In telescopes, controlled mirrors
deformations are introduced by actuators to balance the optical
aberrations that degrade the wavefront coming from an observed
source [3436]. What we developed instead is a sort of reverse
approach of the astrophysical method: the guideline is to apply
deformations (active or static) to the mirrors of the solar collectors
to introduce aberrations in the wavefront, thus degrading the solar
image and, in the case of a CPV dense array system, focusing a
squared spot with a prescribed irradiance. The result would be a
213
p
p
n 1Rm
n q 2 cos mh
p
p
Z jodd n 1Rm
n q 2 sin mh
p
Z j n 1R0n q
Z jev en
Zernike mode
4th
11th
14th
2
3
Table 1
Principal Zernike modes involved in this study.
Fig. 1. Effects introduced on the Sun image by Zernike polynomials 4th, 11th and
14th.
where N is the number of polynomials, Ai is the coefcient associated to the ith polynomial, r is again the radial coordinate in the chosen units, q and h are the polar coordinates dened before. Eq. (4)
depends on the curvature c (which equals the reciprocal of the curvature radius) and the conic constant k. The rst term in the equation represents an ideal conic surface (spherical if k 0) while the
second term represents the deformations described by Zernike
polynomials. The number of terms needed for a good surface modeling grows together with the number of deformations occurring at
different scales.
For a single spherical mirror focusing on axis, we identied
three main polynomials: the 4th, the 11th and the 14th. Fig. 1
shows how the solar spot produced at a xed distance by a
spherical mirror can be modied by introducing controlled
214
Fig. 2. Optical layouts: (a) 3D, (b) xy plane, and (c) yz plane.
215
X pos (mm)
Y pos (mm)
ax ()
ay ()
Radius of curv. (mm)
Mirr1
Mirr2
Mirr3
Mirr4
Mirr5
Mirr6
Mirr7
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
10101.00
0.00
2680.00
14.59
0.00
11480.10
2320.88
1340.00
7.41
12.60
11480.10
2320.88
1340.00
7.41
12.60
11480.10
0.00
2680.00
14.59
0.00
11480.10
2320.88
1340.00
7.41
12.60
11480.10
2320.88
1340.00
7.41
12.60
11480.10
mirror vertex to prevent shading effects. The mirrors of the external ring have been tilted respect to the central one in order to focus
all the chief rays from the Sun center at the center of the receiver
plane having coordinates 0; 0; h. This optical restriction is optional, but we aimed at simplifying the mechanical structure. The
geometrical laws fullling this optical condition are easily derivable and once xed the distance d in the hexapolar grid the positional/tilting parameters of the mirrors can be immediately
calculated. The tilt of the external mirrors reduce by 5% the collecting projected area of the whole system from 37.17 m2 to about
35.25 m2. Positions, tilts and curvatures of the seven mirrors are
listed in Table 2. The generic mirror surface sag has been described
by Eq. (4).
5. Design method
To optically model our system, an end-to-end IDL code has
been written on purpose. Each step of the procedure and the
results have been veried with the optical design software Zemax
as reference. The code includes four main subgroups of routines:
the rst for individually modeling the optical part; the second for
the receiver implementation; the third for optimizing the optics;
the last one for calculating tolerances of optical/mechanical
parameters.
5.1. Optical modeling
The initial optical parameters, which are the initial conditions of
the simulations, have been set by a ray tracing analysis performed
by Zemax. The Sun has been modeled as a nite source with an
angular diameter of 0:53 , neglecting its shape variations caused
by the altitude changing during the day. The curvatures have been
set so that the mirrors could produce a spot with a size compatible
with the mean geometrical concentration chosen. The concentration ratio has been dened as the total mirrors area perpendicular
to the axis of the central mirror divided by the total area of the
receiver, supposing a receiver and a spot ideally with the same size.
We ignored the obscuration introduced by the receiver itself.
The Zernike modes corresponding to deformations useful to fulll our requirements of shape and uniformity have been selected
after xing the curvature. The deformations needed for the central
mirror are the three described in paragraph Section 2, but other
modes (from 5th to 8th) are necessary for the six off-axis mirrors.
The selection criteria is that the superimposition of all the generated spots could produce an irradiance distribution with the desired
features. Symmetry properties have been imposed for the six mirrors in the external ring to reduce the degrees of freedom of our
problem. For example, these mirrors have been chosen with the
same curvature radius and the same values of the 4th, 11th and
14th Zernike coefcients. As consequence, the non-zero coefcients are linked between mirrors by the geometrical relations
shown in Table 3. In this way, opposite mirrors are equal but rotated by p and the nal optical model results to be made of only four
different types of surfaces. It could be certainly possible to identify
more coefcients to improve the performance however increasing
the complexity of the system. This condition would be more suitable both on construction and calibration stages. The independent
modes identied for our system are eight, three for the central mirror (Z4(1), Z11(1) and Z14(1)) and ve for the external ones, all
derived from the modes of the mirror number 2 (Z4(2), Z6(2),
Z7(2), Z11(2), Z14(2)) according to the relations shown in Table 3.
The mirrors of the ring can not have all the same shapes even if this
would be the best constructive condition. The 14th Zernike mode
in fact corresponds to a deformation able to modify the circular
symmetry of the ray bundle into a square and it has an azimuthal
dependence. The simple rotation of a given surface would lead to a
different analytical description in terms of its Zernike coefcients,
except for the coefcients with pure radial dependence. This
means that a ring generated by replicating mirror number 2 and
simply rotating the replicas according to the position in the ring,
would give a series of identical spot rotated as in Fig. 3a. The superimposition of these spots would certainly not lead to a nal square
shape. On the contrary, xing the 14th coefcient to the same value for all the surfaces, the features in Fig. 3b are obtained. The physical size of the gure is 4 105 lm.
The optical scheme described is simulated by the ray-tracing
code written on purpose. The code output is the nal spot produced by the concentrator. In the algorithm, the continuous optical
surfaces of the mirrors have been discretized by a xed number of
sub-apertures. The rays striking every sub-aperture are reected
toward the receiver according to the classic reection law. The
Sun has been modeled as an homogeneous circular source with a
diameter of 0.53, thus applying a realistic divergence model. The
number of rays traced from the Sun has been set in order to minimize sampling errors. To calculate the nominal mirrors shape, we
supposed an ideal tracking condition in which the central solar
ray strikes the central mirror vertex parallel to the optical axis.
Table 3
Correlation between the Zernike coefcients of the seven mirrors.
Z4
Z5
Z6
Z7
Z8
Z11
Z14
Mirr1
Mirr2
Mirr3
Mirr4
Mirr5
Mirr6
Mirr7
Z4(1)
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
Z11(1)
Z14(1)
Z4(2)
0.00
Z6(2)
Z7(2)
0.00
Z11(2)
Z14(2)
Z4(2)
Z6(2) cos 30
Z6(2) sin 30
Z7(2) sin 30
Z7(2) cos 30
Z11(2)
Z14(2)
Z4(2)
Z6(2) cos 30
Z6(2) sin 30
Z7(2) sin 30
Z7(2) cos 30
Z11(2)
Z14(2)
Z4(2)
0.00
Z6(2)
Z7(2)
Z7(2)
Z11(2)
Z14(2)
Z4(2)
Z6(2) cos 30
Z6(2) sin 30
Z6(2) sin 30
Z6(2) cos 30
Z11(2)
Z14(2)
Z4(2)
Z6(2) cos 30
Z6(2) sin 30
Z7(2) sin 30
Z7(2) cos 30
Z11(2)
Z14(2)
216
Fig. 3. Effect introduced in the spot generated by each mirror by the introduction of (a) a Z14 value rotated according to the mirror location and (b) a common Z14 value.
Table 5
Electrical parameters of the AZUR SPACE 3C40 cell at 500 and 1000.
To simulate the performance of a dense array receiver, we considered an electrical model for the PV cells. Neglecting any temperature or spectral variation, the physical behavior of a cell can
be in rst approximation summarized by the following set of equations uniquely depending on the concentration factor :
Isc Isc 1
KT ln
q
Pmax Imax V max
V oc V oc 1 nd
6
7
Pmax
FF
Isc V oc
P
FF
gmax max
Isc V oc
Pin
P in
8
9
where Pin is the total power received by the cell and Isc ; V oc
are short circuit current and open circuit voltage at a given concentration, gmax is the nominal conversion efciency, nd is the diode
ideality factor, T is the absolute temperature of the cell, K is the
Boltzmann constant and q is the electron charge. A more exhaustive
model involving dependencies on T and spectral variations can be
found in [42]. Eq. (8) denes the Fill Factor FF as the ratio between
the power at the maximum power point Pmax and the product of the
open circuit voltage and short circuit current. It is typically better
than 75% for good quality MJ solar cells. It is also an index of the
performance of a solar cell in terms of generated power and it
should be as close as possible to 100%: graphically, the FF is a measure of the squareness of the solar cell IV curve and is also the area
of the largest rectangle which would t in the curve.
Our receiver has been analytically designed and numerically
simulated using a datasheet of commercially available high concentration cells 3C40 produced by AZUR SPACE [44] with a nominal efciency of 39% at 500 (around 38% at 1000) at ambient
temperature. The reference cell has main features described in
Table 4.
In addition to efciency, the cell datasheet gives other output
parameters (Table 5) necessary in the simulations to predict the
cells power output at different illuminations. Moreover, since we
deal exclusively with reective elements, no chromatic aberration
are introduced. The temperature can also be considered reasonably
Table 4
Main features of the AZUR SPACE 3C40 cell implemented in the simulations.
Base material
AR coating
Chip size
Active cell area
GaInP/GaAs/Ge on Ge substrate
TiOx/Al2Ox
5.59 6.39 mm2 = 35.25 mm2
5.5 5.5 mm2 = 30.25 mm2
500
1000
Isc (A)
V oc (V)
Imax (A)
V max (V)
P max (W)
FF (%)
g (%)
2.151
4.239
3.144
3.170
2.102
4.135
2.842
2.762
5.98
11.42
88.0
85.0
39.0
37.8
217
200
200
(a)
(b)
Y (mm)
-100
-100
-200
-100
100
-200
200
X (mm)
Y (mm)
100
100
-200
-100
100
-200
200
X (mm)
Fig. 4. Type-3 receiver design at 500. The (a) panel shows the subdivision in strings. The (b) panel shows which strings are series connected (zones with the same color). The
14 resulting blocks are parallel connected. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
are only 27 and the central zone is made by 24 strings since the
higher concentration results in a smaller irradiated area. The parallel connected blocks are 12. Spillage losses at the corners are
around 810% but again we preferred to preserve the array symmetry avoiding cells in these areas.
To analytically calculate the electrical performance, we developed a routine implementing the Eqs. (5)(9) modeling the cell
output current and voltage as functions of concentration, neglecting resistive effects. As for the electrical scheme, the routine implements the classical equations for calculating voltages and currents
in series and parallel connections. Only these connections are
involved while no model has been implemented for the bypass
diodes. A temperature of T 298 K has been considered and a reasonable value for the ideality factor nd 3:3 has been assumed to
treat the junctions as real. The other initial parameters used are in
Table 5. Being FF only dependent on V oc , it has been calculated
using a classical empirical formula [43] approximated for zero
resistivity:
FF
v oc lnv oc 0:72
1 v oc
10
Table 6
Values in mm of the Zernike coefcients optimized at the two considered concentrations considering type-3 receivers.
500
800
Z4(1)
Z11(1)
Z14(1)
Z4(2)
Z6(2)
Z7(2)
Z11(2)
Z14(2)
1.124
1.103
0.137
0.070
0.098
0.108
1.486
1.053
0.616
0.714
0.223
0.280
0.003
0.019
0.217
0.144
(a)
(b)
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
-150
-100
-50
50
100
150
218
219
0.8
(a)
(b)
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
-150
-100
-50
50
100
150
Table 7
Electrical performance obtained after the optimization run with the three receivers
implemented.
Receiver
Receiver
Receiver
Receiver
1
2
3
3
(500)
(500)
(500)
(800)
Iout (A)
V out (V)
P out (W)
g (%)
grel (%)
98.7
50.5
25.3
32.6
105.2
204.6
409.2
302.6
10288.0
10324.8
10354.5
9868.1
29.2
29.7
29.4
28.0
30.5
31.6
31.2
31.4
Table 8
Zernike coefcients tolerances calculated for the system with 500 coupled with a
type-3 receiver.
Units
mm
mm
Parameter
Z4
Z5
Z6
Z7
Z8
Z9
Z10
Z11
Z12
Z13
Z14
Z15
Z16
Z17
Z18
Z19
Z20
Z21
q
P 2
Z
Mirr1
Table 9
Tolerances on other parameters calculated for the system with 500 coupled with a
type-3 receiver.
Units
mm
Tolerance
Nominal
value
Tolerance
1.124
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.137
0.000
0.000
0.098
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.063
0.063
0.250
0.031
0.031
0.031
0.031
0.008
0.016
0.016
0.016
0.016
0.016
0.004
0.016
0.008
0.016
0.016
1.486
0.000
0.616
0.223
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.003
0.000
0.000
0.217
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.063
0.031
0.063
0.016
0.016
0.031
0.016
0.016
0.008
0.008
0.031
0.016
0.004
0.008
0.008
0.008
0.016
0.008
0.2762
0.1122
The tolerances are strictly related to the electrical scheme implemented in the receiver. For example we calculated that with the
receiver involving more parallels and with the same threshold,
the tolerances would be three times more relaxed. In that case
higher output current would be produced, the output power being
approximately the same.
The mechanical model is shown in Fig. 7. From the analysis of
the Zernike polynomials, the desired deformations on the mirrors
can be applied by a restricted number of actuators positioned on
a certain number of control points. For the system with the chosen
dimensions, these points are located radially on three circumferences every 10. A possible way to obtain the nal surfaces is to
Radius of
curv.
Mirr1
Mirr2
Nominal
value
Tolerance
Nominal
value
Tolerance
10101.0
25.0
11480.1
25.0
mrad
tilt x
tilt y
tilt z
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.4
0.9
1.7
254.6
0.0
0.0
0.2
0.1
1.7
mm
offset x
offset y
offset z
0.0
0.0
0.0
5.0
2.5
25.0
0.0
2680.0
0.0
2.5
2.5
3.1
Mirr2
Nominal
value
Parameter
Table 10
Tolerances calculated for to the common parameters.
Units
Parameter
All mirrors
Nominal value
mrad
Tracking error x
Tracking error y
0.0
0.0
mm
Receiver offset z
4800.0
Tolerance
0.11
0.01
2.5
220
Fig. 7. Shaded models of the SOLARIS concentrator: (a) front side and (b) rear side.
221
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