1. Wafer integrated micro-scale concentrating photovoltaics
- Author
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Gordon A. Keeler, Anna Tanke-Pedretti, William C. Sweatt, Duanhui Li, S.S. Hegedus, Scott M. Paap, Michael P. Saavedra, Ujjwal Das, Tian Gu, Bill Miller, Bradley Howell Jared, Juejun Hu, and Lan Li
- Subjects
Engineering ,Fabrication ,Silicon ,Computer science ,business.industry ,BitTorrent tracker ,Scale (chemistry) ,Photovoltaic system ,chemistry.chemical_element ,Flat panel ,Gallium arsenide ,Form factor (design) ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,chemistry ,Photovoltaics ,Electronic engineering ,Optoelectronics ,Wafer ,business ,Indium gallium arsenide ,Microfabrication - Abstract
Recent development of a novel micro-scale PV/CPV technology is presented. The Wafer Integrated Micro-scale PV approach (WPV) seamlessly integrates multijunction micro-cells with a multi-functional silicon platform that provides optical micro-concentration, hybrid photovoltaic, and mechanical micro-assembly. The wafer-embedded micro-concentrating elements is shown to considerably improve the concentration-acceptance-angle product, potentially leading to dramatically reduced module materials and fabrication costs, sufficient angular tolerance for low-cost trackers, and an ultra-compact optical architecture, which makes the WPV module compatible with commercial flat panel infrastructures. The PV/CPV hybrid architecture further allows the collection of both direct and diffuse sunlight, thus extending the geographic and market domains for cost-effective PV system deployment. The WPV approach can potentially benefits from both the high performance of multijunction cells and the low cost of flat plate Si PV systems.
- Published
- 2017
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