Mirror-augmented photovoltaic designs and performance

In developing photovoltaic (PV) technology, it is crucial to provide lower cost PV power. One of the useful methods is to increase power output of conventional modules since the major costs (module manufacturing, mounts, wiring, installation labor, etc) tend to scale with system area, and increased power output due to improved light harvesting will produce more power per unit area. Under this concept, our research group seeks to provide low cost power, using flat-panel PV modules, which have mirror augmented irradiance through the addition of low cost solar mirrors. In order to harvest more incident solar irradiance, an optimized design configuration between a flat-panel module and mirror are necessary for this fixed (non-tracked) mirror-augmented photovoltaic (MAPV) system. A series of MATLAB calculations were developed to screen various MAPV design configurations. TracePro is a ray tracing program for optical analysis of 3D solid models. We use TracePro to determine irradiance non-uniformity issues on the MAPV system. Both the Matlab and TracePro results are compared to outdoor field test results. I-V curve tracing of test modules is done with a Daystar Multi-tracer for time series analysis. Over a time-limited period of study the MAPV system produced 26.2% more power than an equivalent non-augmented panel.