Simulation of Characteristics of Lens and Light Pipe for High Concentration Solar PV System

고집광 태양광 발전을 위한 렌즈 및 광 파이프 특성 시뮬레이션

The artificial increase in the solar intensity incident on solar cells using lenses or mirrors can allow solar cells to generate equivalent power with a lower cost. In application areas of Fresnel lenses as solar concentrators, several variations of design were devised and tested. Some PV systems still use commercially available flat Fresnel lenses as concentrators. In this study, we designed and optimized flat Fresnel lens and the 'light pipe' to develop 500X concentrated solar PV system. We performed rigorous ray tracing simulation of the flat Fresnel lens and light-pipe. The light-pipe can play imporatant roles of redistributing solar energy at the solar cell and increase the mechanical tolerance so that it can increase the lifetime of the high-concentration solar PV system and decrease the cost of manufacturing. To investigate the sensitivity of the solar power generated by the concentrated solar PV according to the performance of lens and light pipe, we performed raytracing and executed a simulation of electrical performance of the solar cell when it is exposed to the non-uniform illumination. We could conclude that we can generate 95 % or more energy compared with the energy that can be generated by perfectly uniform illumination once the total energy is given the same.