| Work Detail |
A team of Spanish researchers aims to bring concentrated photovoltaic energy closer to commercial viability by miniaturizing its components. Scientists say smaller CPV cells can reduce production costs and allow better assembly of CPV modules.
Scientists at the Polytechnic University of Madrid have developed miniaturized concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) cell technology that promises lower production costs and much cheaper assembly of CPV modules.
“Microconcentration photovoltaics (micro-CPV) is an evolution of conventional CPV technology,” Norman Jost, lead author of the research, explains to pv magazine . “The main objective of our work was to reduce the size of the pair of solar cell and concentrating lens, which allows obtaining abundant advantages, such as lower transmission losses, better distribution of currents and temperatures, and a more compact overall module that is "It resembles the size of standard silicon modules."
Jost acknowledged that CPV technology probably wont match the low prices of silicon photovoltaics, but he also said that CPV has some interesting applications. “The most conventional is deployment in places where available space is limited and high power is needed,” he explained. “As these systems actively track the sun, they could be considered for some transportation cases, such as ships.”
The scientist explained that his work on micro-CPV is a review that includes everything that has been done in this field to date. “It could serve as a guide for anyone who wants to start researching in this field or for any company that is interested in developing a product,” Jost further explained.
In the study “ Integrated Micro-Scale Concentrating Photovoltaics: A Scalable Path Toward High-Efficiency, Low-Cost Solar Power ,” published In Solar RRL , researchers explain that CPV technology has been caught in a chicken-and-egg dilemma for years, as developers fail to reduce high costs or achieve promised efficiencies.
“The lack of sufficient commercial deployment has prevented benefiting from the cost reduction associated with the technologys learning curve, while the lack of competitiveness compared to conventional photovoltaics has prevented large-scale development of the technology in the market,” the group explained.
To partly solve these financial and technical problems, academics say that the fundamentals of CPV technology can be improved by miniaturizing both CPV cells and optical components, and adopting a CPV module assembly scheme more similar to that of the photovoltaic industry.
The review reports on all previous attempts to construct CPV microcells and also includes the most recent industrial and scientific advances. It features innovations such as molded glass matrix lenses, parallel interconnection of solar cells with screen printing, lenses manufactured by roll-to-plate and roll-to-roll methods with UV-curable resins.
“This review examines the current state of the technology, covering advances in microsolar cell development, solar cell assembly solutions, functional interconnection of microsolar cells, novel optical and manufacturing designs, micro-integration. Hybrid CPV/silicon photovoltaics, and internal tracking within a compact, flat module,” the research team underlines.
According to Jost, reducing the size of CPV can bring advantages such as a short optical path, better thermal management, lower resistive losses, reduced weight and a compact module form factor similar to that of silicon photovoltaics. “Other features are internal tracking and hybrid CPV/silicon-PV.” |
