Electricity from concentrated solar IR in solar lighting applications

Author

Fraas, Lewis M. ; Avery, James E. ; Nakamura, Takashi

Author_Institution

JX Crystals, Issaquah, WA, USA

fYear

2002

fDate

19-24 May 2002

Firstpage

963

Lastpage

966

Abstract

The sun´s energy can be concentrated and it´s spectrum divided into visible light and infrared where the visible light can be used for applications such as plant growth or building interior lighting and the IR can be converted to electricity using low bandgap GaSb photovoltaic cells. Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been developing the Solar Lighting System for space based plant growth. As a result, PSI has performed outdoor testing on GaSb cells provided by JX Crystals using concentrated IR solar energy. An efficiency of 15.4% has been measured with a cell output power density of 2.21 W/cm². This efficiency is consistent with indoor flash test data and QE data. The efficiency can be improved to 17.3% using an improved AR coating.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; antireflection coatings; gallium compounds; photovoltaic cells; semiconductor device measurement; 15.4 percent; 17.3 percent; AR coating; GaSb; GaSb photovoltaic cells; Solar Lighting System; concentrated solar IR; efficiency; solar lighting; space based plant growth; Crystals; Density measurement; Energy conversion; Infrared spectra; Performance evaluation; Photonic band gap; Photovoltaic cells; Solar energy; Sun; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2002. Conference Record of the Twenty-Ninth IEEE

ISSN

1060-8371

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7471-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2002.1190758

Filename

1190758