The strategy of improving land use efficiency by combining dish concentrating photovoltaic system with agriculture

Solar photovoltaic will play an increasingly important role as a renewable energy supply. The land demands and solar power consumed by solar PV systems will compete with that required for farming. Thus, PV applications will need wiser strategies for land and solar power utilization. In this paper, we suggest a dish type high-concentration photovoltaic (HCPV) system which helps to solve the competition for sunlight between that required for plant growth and for the PV receiver by using spectral beam splitting techniques. The system mainly consists of a parabolic concentrator, spectral beam filter, light unifying device, cell component and forced cooling system. The beam filter acts as a solar spectrum splitter with the sunlight necessary for plant growth transmitted down to earth while the other parts are directed to the solar cell receiver. This system guarantees the ordinary farming requirement and can be optimized for certain kinds of plant; at the same time, it provides a higher efficiency energy output. The spectral and spatial distribution of radiant intensity was investigated by ray tracing method; the expected conversion efficiency is also given as far as Si solar cell is concerned.