A Solar Thermophotovoltaic Electrical Generator for Remote Power Applications

摘要

This final report presents the results of an SBIR Phase 1 project. Several TPV converters were fabricated and tested. The converters consisted of rare earth doped yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) and Lutetium yttrium aluminum garnet (Lu,YAG) selective emitters and a blackbody emitter, bandpass/infrared (IR) reflector filters, and InGaAs photovoltaic (PV) cells. The operating temperature of the heat source was 1700 K. The filtered blackbody based converter was found to be the most suitable candidate for Solar TPV applications as compared to selective emitter based converters. High output power density (about 2 W/cm(exp 2) and efficiency (26.9) were observed for this converter. The results of our Phase 1 project show the feasibility of the development of an STPV system with a practical total system efficiency of greater than 20 and an output power density of about 2 W/cm(exp 2.