Optimizing concentrating solar collection systems considering integrated performance over time band and location

摘要

The optical design of a solar concentrator is based not on understanding and evaluating a point solution in time, but instead on the integrated performance over a band of time. Important additional factors are to evaluate different locations in the world and different seasons. Here we construct a software tool for modeling bands of time and use it to study different types of passive, low-concentration, CPC-profile solar collectors. Extruded trough geometry is shown to have superior performance to an annulus, and a cylindrically curved CPC profile had better pointing tolerance than the trough collector.