Stationary SMS lenses for Concentrating Photovoltaics

摘要

This paper presents a novel approach regarding the design of stationary, non imaging, refractive lenses with high acceptance angles. A lens lies on a stationary aperture and as the sun moves throughout the day, the concentrated focal spot is tracked by a moving solar cell. The purpose of this work is to replace the 2-axis tracking of the sun with internal motion of the miniaturized solar cell inside the module. We show families of linear lenses with wide acceptance angles 60° and 30° achieving moderate concentrations of 10 - 30 suns. The lens is designed with a variation of the simultaneous multiple surface (SMS) technique which is combined with a genetic algorithm to optimize the free variables of the problem.