Stationary Wide-Angle Concentrator PV System

Concentrator PV systems using highly efficient multijunction photovoltaic cells hold out the promise of very low-cost solar electricity generation, but their adoption has been hamstrung by the requirement for bulky mechanical trackers that add cost, diminish land use, increase maintenance, and exclude roof-top installations. The Stationary Wide-Angle Concentrator (SWAC) PV system will provides the missing link that is required for wide-scale adoption of concentrator systems. It achieves high solar concentration (500x) over a wide range of incident angles in a flat stationary panel that needs no mechanical tracking or control system. The design, enabled by microscale manufacturing, uses a novel self-tracking optical system in which a thermally-reactive fluidic system automatically and internally adjusts the concentrator to maintain peak concentration without mechanical movement of the module. No additional control electronics or system maintenance is required. Such self-tracking concentrators can significantly increase the power output of solar power modules by allowing them to use high-efficiency photovoltaic cells and concentrating optics without incurring the additional costs of precision trackers and specialized mounting hardware. The concentrator itself is designed to be extremely low-cost due to low material usage, wide manufacturing tolerances, and compatibility with high-speed manufacturing. This design can potentially disrupt the PV industry by allowing high efficiency concentrator panels to outperform conventional silicon in environments with high direct solar resource.