Optimization design of hybrid Fresnel-based concentrator for generating uniformity irradiance with the broad solar spectrum

• An improved hybrid Fresnel-based solar concentrator is proposed.
• The concentrator guides all incoming rays onto different positions of solar cell.
• The concentrator improves the uniformity without secondary optical element.
• The spatial non-uniformity of the concentrator is less than 16.2%.
• The geometrical concentrator ratio of the concentrator is more than 1759.8×.

This paper presents a novel hybrid Fresnel-based concentrator with improved uniformity irradiance distribution on the solar cell without using secondary optical element (SOE) in the concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) system to overcome the Fresnel loss and to increase the solar cell conversion efficiency. The designed hybrid Fresnel-based concentrator is composed of two parts, the inner part and the outer part. The inner part is the conventional Fresnel lens, while the outer part is double total internal reflection (DTIR) lens. According to the simple geometrical relation, the profile of the proposed hybrid Fresnel-based concentrator is calculated as an initial design profile. To obtain good irradiance uniformity on the solar cell, optimal prism displacements are optimized by using a simplex algorithm for collimated incident sunlight based on different prism focus on different position principles. In addition, a Monte-Carlo ray-tracing simulation approach is utilized to verify the optical performance for the hybrid Fresnel-based concentrator. Results indicate that the hybrid Fresnel-based concentrator designed using this method can achieve spatial non-uniformity less than 16.2%, f-number less than 0.59 (focal length to entry aperture diameter ratio), geometrical concentrator ratio 1759.8×, and acceptance angle ±0.23°. Compared to the conventional Fresnel-based lens and the traditional hybrid Fresnel-based lens, the optimized concentrator yields a significant improvement in irradiance uniformity on the solar cell with a wide solar spectrum range. It also has good tolerance to the incident sunlight.