Solar concentrators using optics to boost photovoltaics

摘要

Various research activities are aimed towards the development of concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) technology for commercial deployment. Amonix has successfully completed a 700-kW project in Aurora, Colo., US, due to CPV technology finally coming into the right cost range to be competitive with thin-film and crystalline silicon. SolFocus, another leading developer of CPV solar systems, announced in October 2010 that their CPV systems will be used to build the first commercial solar-power plant in Saudi Arabia. A team at University of California, San Diego, US (UCSD) is researching solar concentrator designs that use a two-dimensional sheet of micro-optic lenses as a solar concentrator. Banyan Energy, Berkeley, Calif., US, has introduced aggregated total internal reflection (ATIR) technology, a new class of waveguide optics.