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Energies
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Advances in Concentrator Photovoltaics and Solar Cells
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Advances in Concentrator Photovoltaics and Solar Cells

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "A2: Solar Energy and Photovoltaic Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2020) | Viewed by 14056

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Donato Vincenzi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Physics and Earth Sciences, University of Ferrara, Via Saragat 1, 44122 Ferrara FE, Italy
Interests: physics; solar energy; concentrating photovoltaics; fiber optic solar concentrators; solar cells.

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

CPV, especially high-concentration CPV, has always been associated with technology having the chance to be competitive with standard flat PV modules thanks to its unique potentiality to increase system efficiency due to multijunction solar cells, precisely manufactured optical components, and accurate tracking systems. The evolution of the PV market of recent years has shown a completely different trend. The strong cost decrease of crystalline silicon modules and the lack of a real CPV supply chain has rapidly led many CPV manufacturers to leave the market. What is the new role of CPV in today’s PV scenario?

Concentrating sunlight opens up the possibility of exploiting potentialities that PV flat modules cannot reach, and such research can leverage the developments of CPV technology to fit into a new generation of systems serving different purposes with respect to mere power generation. This mutated landscape has pushed research centers and companies operating in this field to rethink the purpose of CPV systems.

Luminescent solar concentrators (LSC), as an example, can be easily integrated into buildings, barriers, or cantilever roofs, where energy harvesting is just one purpose. Solar shading and switchable transparency can take advantage of the PV power produced by LSCs while keeping an unmatched level of integration. High-concentration systems can provide an adequate radiant flux on multiple-junction solar cells and, meanwhile, provide thermal power that can be exploited in residential and industrial environments. Fiber optic concentrators can be designed to redirect, depending on the specific needs, the radiant flux to dark alleys or to solar cells, showing unexpressed potential.

This Special Issue focuses on the enabling technologies developed in the field of CPV and on their application in the present renewable energy landscape.

We invite papers on recent technical developments of CPV devices, components, and systems, as well as reviews and case studies relevant to show the future direction of concentrating systems.

Prof. Dr. Donato Vincenzi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • concentrating photovoltaics
  • multipurpose solar concentrators
  • building-integrated photovoltaics
  • concentrating solar louvers
  • luminescent solar concentrators

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 10035 KiB  
Article
Performance Optimization of Luminescent Solar Concentrators under Several Shading Conditions
by Paolo Bernardoni, Giulio Mangherini, Marinela Gjestila, Alfredo Andreoli and Donato Vincenzi
Energies 2021, 14(4), 816; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14040816 - 4 Feb 2021
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 2405
Abstract
The need of clean energy is constantly increasing, and Building Integrated PhotoVoltaic (BIPV) technologies represent valuable assets to expand even further the photovoltaic market. Thanks to BIPVs. a new concept of local electric microgrid will probably emerge as this kind of technology can [...] Read more.
The need of clean energy is constantly increasing, and Building Integrated PhotoVoltaic (BIPV) technologies represent valuable assets to expand even further the photovoltaic market. Thanks to BIPVs. a new concept of local electric microgrid will probably emerge as this kind of technology can turn buildings from energy wells to energy sources. Luminescent Solar Concentrator (LSC) panels are perfect to achieve this goal, indeed, contrary to standard flat PhotoVoltaic (PV) modules, they can be exploited in transparent or semi-transparent building façades. Thus, the purpose of this work was the optimization of the performance of LSC panels for BIPV applications. Being an application-oriented study, we paid particular attention to the scalability of the assembling process and the use of LSC slabs functionalized only with widely available organic commercial dyes and high-performance commercial silicon solar cells. The electrical and optical performance of the LSC panels were firstly simulated and then, once the most promising configurations were identified, the respective prototypes were assembled to compare the simulation results with the experimental measurements. These analyses were performed both under uniform illumination and in some relevant shading configurations typical for BIPV devices in operating conditions. The obtained results show that LSC panels that employ PV cells coupled with reflective films can yield a higher efficiency than a traditional system with cells placed along four sides. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Concentrator Photovoltaics and Solar Cells)
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15 pages, 2292 KiB  
Article
The CPV “Toolbox”: New Approaches to Maximizing Solar Resource Utilization with Application-Oriented Concentrator Photovoltaics
by Harry Apostoleris, Marco Stefancich and Matteo Chiesa
Energies 2021, 14(4), 795; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14040795 - 3 Feb 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2793
Abstract
As the scaling of silicon PV cells and module manufacturing has driven solar energy penetration up and costs down, concentrator photovoltaic technologies, originally conceived as a cost-saving measure, have largely been left behind. The loss of market share by CPV is being locked [...] Read more.
As the scaling of silicon PV cells and module manufacturing has driven solar energy penetration up and costs down, concentrator photovoltaic technologies, originally conceived as a cost-saving measure, have largely been left behind. The loss of market share by CPV is being locked in even as solar energy development encounters significant obstacles related to space constraints in many parts of the world. The inherently higher collection efficiency enabled by the use of concentrators could substantially alleviate these challenges, but the revival of CPV for this purpose requires substantial reinvention of the technology to actually capture the theoretically possible efficiency gains, and to do so at market-friendly costs. This article will discuss recent progress in key areas central to this reinvention, including miniaturization of cells and optics to produce compact, lightweight “micro-CPV” systems; hybridization of CPV with thermal, illumination and other applications to make use of unused energy streams such as diffuse light and waste heat; and the integration of sun-tracking into the CPV module architecture to enable greater light collection and more flexible deployment, including integration into built structures. Applications showing particular promise include thermal applications such as water heating, industrial processes and desalination; agricultural photovoltaics; building-integrated photovoltaics with dynamic daylighting capabilities; and chemical processes including photocatalysis and hydrogen production. By appropriately tailoring systems to the available solar resource and local energy demand, we demonstrate how CPV can finally achieve real-world efficiencies, or solar resource utilization factors, far higher than those of standard silicon-based PV systems. This makes the argument for sustained development of novel CPV designs that can be applied to the real-world settings where this efficiency boost will be most beneficial. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Concentrator Photovoltaics and Solar Cells)
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20 pages, 3552 KiB  
Article
A Forecasting-Based Control Algorithm for Improving Energy Managment in High Concentrator Photovoltaic Power Plant Integrated with Energy Storage Systems
by Andrea Salimbeni, Mario Porru, Luca Massidda and Alfonso Damiano
Energies 2020, 13(18), 4697; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13184697 - 9 Sep 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1928
Abstract
The High Concentrator Photovoltaic (HCPV) technology, due to its high efficiency, is considered one of the most promising solutions for the exploitation of sun-irradiation-based Renewable Energy Sources (RES). Nevertheless, the HCPV production is strictly connected to the Direct Normal Irradiation (DNI) making this [...] Read more.
The High Concentrator Photovoltaic (HCPV) technology, due to its high efficiency, is considered one of the most promising solutions for the exploitation of sun-irradiation-based Renewable Energy Sources (RES). Nevertheless, the HCPV production is strictly connected to the Direct Normal Irradiation (DNI) making this photovoltaic technology more sensible to cloudiness than traditional ones. In order to mitigate the power intermittence and improve production programmability, the integration between Energy Storage Systems (ESSs) and HCPV, resorting to forecasting algorithms, has been investigated. Specifically, a local weather forecasting algorithm has been used for estimating the daily time evolution of DNI, air Temperature (T), Wind Speed (WS), and Air Mass (AM). These data are subsequently processed by means of an accurate HCPV model for the estimation of one day-ahead daily power production profile. The processing of HCPV forecasted generation by means of a properly tuned filter-based algorithm allows one day-ahead the definition of power profiles of ESS and power plant respectively, considering also the ESS constraints and the characteristic of the implemented real-time control algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed forecasting model and control algorithm is verified through a simulation study referring to the solar power plant constituted by HCPV and ESS installed in Ottana, Italy. The results highlight that the application of the proposed approach lessens the power fluctuation effect caused by HCPV generation preserving the batteries at the same time. The feasibility and advantages of the proposed approach are finally presented. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Concentrator Photovoltaics and Solar Cells)
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18 pages, 2587 KiB  
Article
A Comparison of the Structure and Properties of Opaque and Semi-Transparent NIP/PIN-Type Scalable Perovskite Solar Cells
by Thibault Lemercier, Lara Perrin, Emilie Planès, Solenn Berson and Lionel Flandin
Energies 2020, 13(15), 3794; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13153794 - 23 Jul 2020
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 6204
Abstract
For over a decade, single-junction perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have experienced an unprecedent increase in efficiencies and even offer opportunities to surpass the Shockley–Queisser limit in multijunction configuration. There is consequently an intense need for easily processable semi-transparent PSCs as a basis of [...] Read more.
For over a decade, single-junction perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have experienced an unprecedent increase in efficiencies and even offer opportunities to surpass the Shockley–Queisser limit in multijunction configuration. There is consequently an intense need for easily processable semi-transparent PSCs as a basis of affordable tandems. The current study reports the comparison of negative-intrinsic-positive (NIP) and positive-intrinsic-negative (PIN) architectures based on CH3NH3PbI3{Cl}-based perovskite. Both devices could be prepared with the same N-type (SnO2 nanoparticles) and P-type (poly-triarylamine (PTAA) polymer) materials. Each layer (except for electrodes) was deposited using solvent-based low temperature processes, contrasting with other literature studies, especially SnO2 for PIN-type purposes. A thorough experimental comparison of the two architectures reveals rather similar optical and structural properties for perovskites, whether deposited on an N- or P-type underlayer, with also comparable efficiencies in the final devices. A compatible deposition process for sputtered indium tin oxide (ITO) as a semi-transparent electrode was then performed for both architectures. Upon varying the illuminated devices’ side, the semi-transparent cells exhibited different photocurrent behaviors, the magnitude of which depended on the device’s architecture. In conclusion, despite slightly better efficiencies for the semi-transparent NIP-type devices, the semi-transparent PIN-type counterparts also appear to be optically attractive for (two-terminal) tandem applications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Concentrator Photovoltaics and Solar Cells)
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