Outdoor overall performance of a novel air-gap-lens-walled compound parabolic concentrator (ALCPC) incorporated with photovoltaic/thermal system

• A prototype of an ALCPC-PV/T system was designed and set up.
• Good optical agreements were observed between simulation and experiment.
• The effects of the temperature on the electrical characteristics were discussed.
• The thermal performance for circulating cooling was analyzed.
• The system efficiency was calculated to present the overall performance.

A novel air-gap-lens-walled compound parabolic concentrator incorporated with photovoltaic/thermal system (ALCPC-PV/T) was proposed. The optical, electrical and thermal performances of the ALCPC-PV/T under the outdoor condition were analyzed for building integrated concentrating photovoltaic/thermal application. The simulation and experiment were carried out to reveal the optical characteristics of ALCPC-PV/T on two typical days. The experiment results verified the optical simulation results that the ALCPC-PV/T system had a half acceptance angle of 35° and an average optical efficiency of 83.0% within the half acceptance angle for direct incidence. Furthermore, the average optical efficiencies on the two typical days were all above 60% under the actual outdoor condition considering direct and diffuse solar radiation. Details of electrical characteristics affected by the temperature of circulating cooling water were also displayed. The electrical and thermal efficiencies of the ALCPC-PV/T system during the test were 6.0% and 35.0% respectively with the final water temperature of 70 °C. In addition, the fitted results indicated that under the zero reduced temperature condition, the thermal efficiency of the ALCPC PV/T system was 52.0%, and the corresponding electrical efficiency was 6.6%.