Exploring ultra-high concentrator photovoltaic Cassegrain-Koehler-based designs up to 6000×.

Ultra-High Concentrator Photovoltaic (UHCPV) designs with up to more than 6000× geometrical concentration and optical efficiency of 80% are demonstrated in this paper by means of ray tracing simulations. These are developed based on Cassegrain-Koehler concentrators [Opt. Lett.

Optical design of a 4-off-axis-unit Cassegrain ultra-high concentrator photovoltaics module with a central receiver.

Ultra-high concentrator photovoltaics (UHCPV), with concentrations higher than 1000 suns, have been pointed out by different authors as having great potential for being a cost-effective PV technology. This Letter presents a UHCPV Cassegrain-based optical design in which the sunrays are concentrated and sent from four different and independent paraboloid-hyperboloid pairs optical units onto a single central receiver. The optical design proposed has the main advantage of the achievement of ultra-high concentration ratios using relative small mirrors with similar performance values of efficiency, acceptance angle, and irradiance uniformity to other designs.