Method and Apparatus to Lower Cost Per Watt with Concentrated Linear Solar Panel

摘要

The present invention proposes a hybrid methodology and apparatus between photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) solar panels to lower the photovoltaic solar energy production cost. In particular, the disclosed methodology addresses a simple quasi-parabolic trough PV (QPTPV) low concentration system with greater tolerance to tracker pointing errors. The quasi-parabolic trough (QPT) reflector is defocused to cover the width of a linear solar cells array, which is reduced from a large rectangular solar cells panel. In summary, the QPTPV system consists of low cost quasi-parabolic reflectors, a compact linear PV cells array and a lower cost relaxed pointing 2-axes tracker. The combination of these low cost technologies disclosed can achieve the lowest cost per kilowatt hour of photovoltaic energy production.