Two-junction holographic spectrum-splitting microconcentrating photovoltaic system

Abstract

Spectrum-splitting is a multijunction photovoltaic technology that can effectively improve the conversion efficiency and reduce the cost of photovoltaic systems. Microscale PV design integrates a group of microconcentrating photovoltaic (CPV) systems into an array. It retains the benefits of CPV and obtains other benefits such as a compact form, improved heat rejection capacity, and more versatile PV cell interconnect configurations. We describe the design and performance of a two-junction holographic spectrum-splitting micro-CPV system that uses GaAs wide bandgap and silicon narrow bandgap PV cells. The performance of the system is simulated with a nonsequential raytracing model and compared to the performance of the highest efficiency PV cell used in the micro-CPVarray. The results show that the proposed system reaches the conversion efficiency of 31.98% with a quantum concentration ratio of 14.41x on the GaAs cell and 0.75x on the silicon cell when illuminated with the direct AM1.5 spectrum. This system obtains an improvement over the best bandgap PV cell of 20.05%, and has an acceptance angle of +/- 6 deg allowing for tolerant tracking. (C) 2017 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)