Design, fabrication and characterisation of low-cost sunlight concentrators for photovoltaic applications.
Solar cells converter sunlight directly into electricity. It is one of the most important energy technologies of the future. A widespread application of some high efficiency solar cells is currently limited due to their high cost of solar cells. One of the solutions to this problem is to reduce the solar cell area by employing a solar concentrator, which is usually low-cost. This project aims to evaluate feasibility of this approach.
The key tasks include: • To familiarise with the fundamentals of relevant topics • To design and fabricate suitable solar concentrators • To characterise the optical performance of the concentrators • To test the electrical performance of the concentrated photovoltaic system • To evaluate the economic viability of the technology.