Edinburgh Napier University

  The focus of this research is to develop a solar concentrator for the purpose of building integration which is compact, static and, at the same time, able to collect maximum solar energy. The novel concentrator is designed to be used in Window Integrated Concentrated PV (WICPV). The window provides natural light transmission as well as electricity production. The concentrator is optically optimised for different incident angles of the incoming light rays. Evaluating the best combination of the optical efficiency and the acceptance angle, the 4x concentrator built from dielectric material, working with total internal reflection is optimised. It is found to have a constant optical efficiency of 40% for an acceptance angle equal to 120° (−60°, +60°) and an optical concentration ratio (OCR) of 1.6x. This enables capture of the sun rays all day long from both direct and diffuse light. Higher OCR’s are obtained for different dimensions of the solar concentrator; however, the acceptance angles are relatively low. Three prototypes with different heights (10mm, 15mm and 20 mm) of the optimised concentrators have been manufactured and tested in indoor conditions. The experimental results validate the results obtained from the optical model with a variation of less than 5%.