Design and construction of non-imaging planar concentrator for concentrator photovoltaic system

A novel configuration of solar concentrator, which is the non-imaging planar concentrator, capable of producing much more uniform sunlight and reasonably high concentration ratio, is designed and constructed. This design is envisioned to be incorporated in concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) systems. The work presented here reports on the design, optical alignment and application of the prototype, which is installed at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Malaysia. In the architecture of the prototype, 360 flat mirrors, each with a dimension of 4.0 cm × 4.0 cm, are arranged into 24 rows and 15 columns with a total reflection area of about 5760 cm2. In addition to that, illumination distribution for the prototype is simulated and its results are then compared with the experiment result.