Experimental study on efficiency enhancement of concentrated solar photo-voltaic systems with convex lenses and cooling

Abstract

Low efficiency can be identified as one of the main drawbacks of solar photo-voltaic systems. The main two factors that affect the efficiency of the existing solar photovoltaic cells are the operating temperature and the solar irradiance received by the solar cell. This paper presents an efficiency enhanced solar photo-voltaic system, which concentrates the solar irradiance through convex lenses and at the same time, cools the solar cells using a forced flow of mineral turpentine. The evaluation of the test results shows an enhancement of power output and efficiency by 60% & 32% respectively by both cooling and concentrating.