Degradation of back surface acrylic mirrors: Implications for low concentration and mirror augmented photovoltaics

In developing photovoltaic (PV) technology for widespread adoption, it is crucial to provide PV power with comparable prices to traditional technologies. A method to lower the cost of energy delivered by a PV system is to increase power output. While PV panel costs account for as much as 50% of system costs [1] balance of system (BOS) is among the other major costs associated with PV technologies. Because mounting, wiring, and installation tend to scale with system area, higher efficiency devices will lower these BOS costs. Under this concept, our research group seeks to provide opportunities for lower cost power using flat-panel PV modules augmented through the addition of low cost solar mirrors. Since mirror augmentation costs ~10% of module cost, and increased irradiance scales almost linearly with power production, in order to harvest more incident solar irradiance, an optimized configuration design between flat-panel module and mirror are necessary in this fixed (non-tracked) mirror-augmented photovoltaic (MAPV) system. As with many renewable energy technologies, PV energy generation requires durability of systems, components, and materials for 25 years in order to be economically viable. In order to ensure investors and early adopters that MAPV can fulfill expected service lifetimes of 25+ years durability studies have been performed showing the effects of artificial aging in terms of angle distribution of reflected light and reflectance loss.