Optical and electrical performance analysis of non-imaging low concentrating photovoltaic-thermal cogeneration system

A concentrating solar photovoltaic thermal (CPVT) cogeneration system is a dual output (electrical and thermal energy) system which consists of a concentrator, a PV module and a heat recovery system. In the case of conventional non-tracking compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) based CPVT system, non-uniform illumination and non-uniform temperature distribution on the PVT module reduces its electrical and thermal power output. In this work, a homogeniser is optimised and integrated to the truncated 3X CPC to reduce the illumination non-uniformity at all angles (from normal incidence to the acceptance angle). Further, a scaled down CPVT system is fabricated and optical and electrical analysis has been performed under solar simulator. The experimental results show promising improvement in electrical efficiency (>50% at high incidence angles) with the incorporation of homogeniser. The study proves that for CPC-PVT systems homogenisation is necessary for realizing better electrical and thermal performance.