Novel Configurations of Luminescent Solar Concentrators

Abstract

The luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) collects incident radiation over a large surface and concentrates it with the use of luminescent centres onto small edge surfaces, where it can be converted by photovoltaic (PV) cells. It presents a way to make photovoltaic systems more cost-effective and is particularly suited for building integration. Conventional LSCs and thin film composite LSCs have been fabricated and compared. No significant difference in performance was found between these two configurations. Moreover, the angular distribution of the luminescent output was examined for both types of LSCs. A versatile raytrace model has been developed and applied to the experiments with good qualitative agreement. Simulations have been carried out with the raytrace model to determine the potential and the mechanisms for performance optimisations of the LSC.