Articles techniques et présentations

Solar energy, being the most abundant natural source of renewable energy, will play a crucial role in the ongoing global renewable energy translation. However, energy converted utilization of solar energy, which can be either thermal or electrical, technologies have the limitation of lower input energy density (Layton, 2008). The area utilization of these solar power conversion systems, costs, and their environmental impacts will also become a major concern in the coming decades (Hernandez et al., 2015; van de Ven et al., 2021; Turney and Fthenakis, 2011). The most sought-after and straightforward approach adopted to address this issue of lower energy density is by concentrating solar energy to a finite area using optics technology intervention. Light concentration optics technologies have been classified with performance as low concentration (2X – 100X), medium concentration (100X – 1000X), and high concentration (>1000X) optics. Among them, low-concentration optics (LCO) have been identified with simpler approaches and minimalized requirements of active cooling methods upon different application systems. The additional prospectus of a compact system design of LCO technologies can be considered for small power plants or low-capacity decentralized solutions. Moreover, its applicability in built environments, such as for building integration/ retrofits has been discussed more recently (Parupudi et al., 2020). Recently, the low-concentration Planar Light Concentrator (PLC) technologies have been well acknowledged globally, and many research efforts have been put forward to develop new designs and solutions, indicating its prospect for Concentrated PV/Thermal technologies. Waveguide-based PLC has evolved as a major contender in PLC technologies. Recognizing its importance, the US Department of Energy acknowledged the potential of waveguide-based PLC through the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) project in 2016 (“University of Rochester | arpa-e.energy.gov,” n.d.). However, design development and optimization of any PLC technologies require elemental and subsequent system-level ray optics modelling, which is impractical with conventional optics drawing and numerical modelling. Also, the angular performance study of optics design, especially for solar applications is difficult to conduct conventionally. Herein, the proprietary optics design for the PLC has been evaluated using the Ray Optics Module of COMSOL Multiphysics software. The multi-parameters have been well defined, parametrized individually, and optimized with their causality, leading to different designs correlated to different output requirements. The geometrical concentration factor depending on the system size, the final output light concentration, and the solar acceptance has been evaluated for the different design types and parameters and represented graphically to gain a better system and optics design selection process. Further, the secondary optics rays, analyzed through the simulation models give a better understanding of the fundamental optics phenomenon concerned with the optics designs. Data processing and data modelling has also been carried out through COMSOL post-processing elements to have better data visualization. In conclusion, the proprietary PLC design has been developed with ray tracing models using COMSOL Multiphysics software. The optimized designs are fabricated and validated practically as a low-concentration solar optics solution.

References

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