Flowline analysis of etendue transfer of a wide-angle solar concentrator

摘要

We introduce flowlines as an analytical tool to optimize solar concentrator designing based on non-imaging optics. Comparisons were performed for multiple concentrator configurations from the same flowlines group to understand the final flux on low-cost heat pipes or minichannel absorbers for a small scale residential hybrid system. With the optical simulation results, we assemble and test a novel optical design for new low-cost, high-efficiency solar CHP collector to analyze both thermal and electric performances. By combining photovoltaic (PV) cells with heat pipes and mini channels, we further thermal energy capture while simultaneously enhance the solar cell performance.