Energy Conversion and Management 51 (2010) 14761480

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Energy Conversion and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

Linear Fresnel concentrators for building integrated applications

Daniel Chemisana *, Manuel Ibez
University of Lleida, c/Pere Cabrera s/n, 25001 Lleida, Spain

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
In this paper an exhaustive study of a stationary wide angle Fresnel lens combined with a moving compound parabolic concentrator to track the Sun during the year is presented. The concentrating optical systems is proposed for building integrated solar applications. In the rst section, the sensitivity analysis of design key parameters and its relationships is addressed. The parameters under study are the lens curvature, the maximum concentration and the compactness or the related aspect ratio. In the second section, it is concluded that a concentration ratio of 12.5 suns is the optimum geometric concentration for the Fresnel lens to satisfy both architectural features and solar concentration requirements. In the third section, the combination of the optimum Fresnel two compound parabolic concentrator designs is evaluated. The deep analysis of the optical system presented offers useful results for future designers. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 26 June 2009 Accepted 29 January 2010 Available online 26 February 2010 Keywords: Photovoltaic Linear concentration Fresnel CPC Solar tracking Building integration

1. Introduction The most widely used medium and high concentration solar systems are equipped with a mechanical solar tracking system which normally operates by moving the entire concentrator. Avoiding visible movement has been one of the demanding design requirements of solar building integrated systems. In order to satisfy this requirement amongst others, for example the need for the optical element to permit the building interior to receive light, the use of a stationary Fresnel lens can be adopted. Application of linear Fresnel lenses to design a xed concentrator with tracking absorber was mentioned in the past [1] but the rst three-dimensional optical analysis of xed Fresnel lenses combined with a moving compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) receiver appeared recently [2]. In that paper two optical designs which showed promising results were compared, the rst system was based on a concave Fresnel lens designed to achieve 10 suns of concentration in paraxial incidence conditions and the second system used a Fresnel lens with half concentration ratio combined with a compound parabolic concentrator. Some practical interesting results were found in that study but the conguration of a domed linear Fresnel lens as primary concentrator and a compound parabolic reector as secondary concentrator needs to be studied further: (1) Is it possible to recommend a maximum concentration ratio? (2) Which are the basic parameters in the optical design? and (3) Which are the relationships among them? The results found in [2] were partial and a deeper and systematic study is needed.
* Corresponding author. E-mail address: daniel.chemisana@macs.udl.cat (D. Chemisana). 0196-8904/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2010.01.024

The paper presented here is the continuation of [2]. But based on the same optical conguration, a stationary wide angle Fresnel lens combined with a moving CPC to track the Sun during the year, a deeper analysis of the system is given with some useful expressions for future designers.

2. Design parameters relationships Both sides of a Fresnel lens could be grooved but in practice, to reduce transmission losses and accumulation of dust and dirt, they are grooved on the downward facing surface and have a smooth at surface facing the Sun. Optical losses in a Fresnel lens are high and are mainly due to reection at the interfaces, diffraction due to close groove spacing, absorption in the lens material, chromatic aberrations and slope errors. These losses cause lead to low optical performance of the Fresnel lens and also create non-uniform illumination at the focal plane. Fresnel lens and reector type solar concentrators, mainly using photovoltaic absorbers, have been developed for low concentration applications. Whiteld et al. [4] have shown that there are some designs with two to three times reduced cost when compared to conventional non-concentrating devices [3]. The design parameters under analysis are the lens curvature and maximum concentration. Implicit in these is a third which is the compactness or the related aspect ratio. The compactness is dened as the ratio between the lens thickness and maximal focal length produced between the lens and the receiver. The aspect ratio, a parameter widely quoted in the eld of concentrating optics, is the inverse of the compactness.

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2.1. Radius of curvature With the objective of being able to analyse the effect of varying the radius of curvature of the designed lens, it is necessary to x the lens width. This allows us to dene a dimensionless radius of curvature R and hence extrapolate the obtained results to any gic ven lens width and curvature.

40 35

Losses (%)

30 25 20 15 10 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

R c

Rc D

The behaviour of the aspect ratio as a function of the radius of curvature, presented in Fig. 1, shows that the aspect ratio decreases for increasing radii of curvature. Converting from aspect ratio to compactness we achieve a function (Figs. 1 and 2) showing high correlation (R2 = 0.9998) to a linear t from which the relationship between both variables can be easily quantied. For example, for a geometric or maximum concentration of 10 suns the compactness is related to the dimensionless radius of curvature by:

Maximun concentratio ratio (suns)

Fig. 3. Average optical losses against maximum concentration ratio.

Compactness 1:9022R 0:1183: c

2.2. Maximum concentration The lens and the receiver will be subject to certain geometric conditions depending on the level of concentration pursued. For the studied system, when the concentrator is stationary and the solar tracking is done by the receiver, the geometric ratio is decisive in the mean annual concentration achieved. In linear concentrators, the planar focal area has two dimensions to be considered: its length parallel to the prisms in the lens and its transversal width. The lens concentrates in the transversal direction; it is therefore its width which sets the maximum achiev-

1.4 1.2

able concentration. The focal area shape depends on the Sun incidence angles and the best concentrating conditions are achieved in paraxial conditions, when the incidence angle is zero. When combining a linear Fresnel lens designed for a maximum concentration ratio of 15 suns with a collector 15 times narrower the losses in annual solar radiation are above 30% (31.32%). In addition to other loss mechanisms (reection at the prism interfaces, diffraction, etc.), the main losses are due to the receiver dimensions which is not wide enough to capture the entire focal area when operating out of paraxial conditions. Fig. 3 has been numerically calculated to plot the average global losses against maximum concentration ratio desired. However expected, Fig. 3 shows the increase of optical losses increase with increasing geometric concentration. The optical losses over the range of 1012 suns do not increase substantially. Oscillations shown in Fig. 3 are considered within the systematic error associated to the ray tracing software and its numerical methods. The performance of the lens over this concentration ratio will be analysed in detail in Section 3. 2.3. Objective function A large set of ray tracing simulation has been done with software tool OptiCad, for the Fresnel lens proposed in [2], to clarify its optical behaviour. The objective is to dene the dependence of the concentration ratio as a function of the radius of curvature and the aspect ratio of the lens. The concentration ratio is dened as the ratio between the irradiance received by the receptor and the irradiance incident on the Fresnel lens. These interesting results are plotted in Fig. 4. A multilinear function has been tted to the optical simulated results. The function, its coefcients and the determination coefcient are shown in Table 1. In a similar way, a multilinear function has been obtained for the maximum optical concentration achieved in paraxial conditions. These results could be especially interesting for application of linear Fresnel lenses in combination with two axis tracking units. The tting results are shown in Table 2.

Aspect ratio

1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4

Rc+

Fig. 1. The behaviour of the aspect ratio as a function of the dimensionless radius of curvature.

3 2.5

Compactness

2 1.5 1 0.5 0 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4

3. Optimisation of the Fresnel concentration ratio The best combination of lens characteristics varies depending on the objective pursued. If the desired result is to have a highly compact system, the lens must be designed with a low radius of curvature (Fig. 2). An undesirable effect of this curvature is the amplication of optical losses caused by reection at the prism interfaces due to increased obliqueness of incident radiation on the lens surface. In Fig. 5 solar rays incide to the lens from left hand side. Rays refracted in an upward right direction reach the receiver

Rc+

Fig. 2. The behaviour of the compactness as a function of the dimensionless radius of curvature.

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Fig. 4. The optical concentration of the Fresnel lens as a function of the radius of curvature (x axis) and aspect ratio (y axis). The optical concentration is shown on the colour scale. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Table 1 Function adjusted to average concentration ratio data. Function Cs = A0 + A1Cm + A2Cg + A3Rc Coefcients A0 = 1.76295084 A1 = 9.07563936 A2 = 4.29756495 101 A3 = 3.77472445 102 R2 0.9956

concentrations, for which the loss curve achieves a relative minimum, range between 11.5 and 12.5 suns. Between these values the difference in terms of percentage losses is less than 1%, therefore it is concluded that a concentration ratio of 12.5 suns is the optimum geometric concentration for a Fresnel lens operating as a stationary concentrator with the characteristics dened previously Fig. 7. 4. Optimisation of the optical system

Table 2 Function adjusted to maximum concentration ratio data. Function Cmax = A0 + A1Cm + A2Cg + A3Rc Coefcients A0 = 1.35518167 A1 = 6.10453268 A2 = 7.18563896 101 A3 = 2.59366848 102 R2 0.9902

where as rays reected by the interfaces travel to the bottom right are lost. If, on the other hand, the objective is to achieve a high optical concentration, the compactness of the lens must to some extent be sacriced to allow the lens to concentrate with high efciency throughout the annual solar movement. In the case of a geometric or maximum concentration of 10 suns, it can be seen from Fig. 6 that the value of the average annual optical concentration increases proportionally with decreasing compactness of the system. This proportionality decreases for aspect ratios greater than 1.75 at which point the function become asymptotic. The behaviour of the optical concentration reached by the system when aligned with the solar axis is similar to the average optical concentration, although the asymptote is reached at a lower aspect ratio (1.33). The range of aspect ratios between 1.25 and 1.75 corresponds to a range of dimensionless radius of curvature, R , between 0.66 and 1.05. c The particular results for a lens dened with R = 0.77, the c losses in the optical efciency, dened relative to the geometric concentration, oscillate over an interval of 1012 suns. Detailed behaviour analysis of the lens in this range is done using the average optical concentration for a xed transversal incidence angle (w = 0) and a variable longitudinal angle (h 23.5). The geometric

A good option for achieving a larger acceptance angle is to combine a linear convex Fresnel lens with a secondary concentrator, the photovoltaic module being placed at the exit aperture of the secondary concentrator. The requirements for the secondary concentrator are: a large acceptance angle and a homogenizer effect. The distribution of the Fresnel lens concentrated radiation follows a Gaussian pattern. This distribution is not favourable for photovoltaic cells whose performance is optimum under homogeneous illumination conditions. More homogeneous cells illumination can be achieved adding the secondary concentrator. It is found that the two-dimensional compound parabolic concentrator has the characteristics adequate for the system proposed [5]. Taking into account the characteristics exhibited by the CPC, different combinations of this type of non imaging reector device together with the Fresnel lens have been analysed. Details about the most favourable ones are presented in the following lines. The rst proposal is the combination of a secondary concentrator which maintains the value of the optical concentration close to its maximum value as dened for the specied geometric concentration (12.5). A summary of the optical concentration values obtained for a Fresnel lens without a secondary and for a Fresnel lens with a CPC secondary with an acceptance angle of 60 attached are shown in Table 3. Both congurations show, in paraxial conditions, similar optical concentration ratios. This result is understandable given that the focal area is in these conditions directly and completely incident over the receiver (without producing reection at the secondary concentrator). Lets say the secondary concentrator is not working. But the average annual optical concentration increases from 9.2 to 10 suns when the secondary is added, thus the losses are reduced by 6.4% with respect to the maximum concentration.

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Fig. 5. Ray paths for light incident on a Fresnel lens of high curvature.

10

Concentration (suns)

9 8 7 6 5 0.75
Average concentration Concentration on axis

Table 4 Concentration ratio for different incidence angles, CPCII. h () 0 0 23.5 23.5

w ()
0 60 0 60

Fresnel lens + CPCII 13.7 11.8 13.3 5.6

1.25

1.5

1.75

2.25

2.5

Aspect ratio
Fig. 6. Average and maximum concentration ratio against aspect ratio.

14

12 10 8

Concentration (suns)

12 10 8 6 4
Average concentration Optical efficiency losses

6 4

The second favourable proposal is to implement a CPC with the same acceptance as in the previous case (60), but with aperture width with a geometric relation with respect to the lens of 12.5. For smaller apertures a fraction of the concentrated radiation is not captured, these being the rays whose angular deviation leaving the lens is such that they do not arrive at the CPC aperture. The optical concentration values for this arrangement are listed in Table 4. Under this scheme the average optical concentration increases to 11.1 suns with losses somewhat larger than in the previous case (3.2%) but still smaller than for the lens without a secondary Fig. 8. To consider compactness aspects in the comparison between proposals, Fig. 6 shows the relationship between the optical concentration and the distance between the absorber and the lens. Data are simulated over a range of times of day and days of the year.

10

11

12

13

14

15

Losses (%)

Geometrical concentration (suns) Concentration (suns)

Fig. 7. Variation with geometric concentration of average optical concentration (solid curve, left hand scale) and optical efciency losses (dashed curve, right hand scale).

14 12 10 8 6 4 0 100 200 300 400 500 600

CPC system II CPC system I

Table 3 Concentration ratio for different incidence angles, CPCI. h () 0 0 23.5 23.5

w ()
0 60 0 60

Fresnel lens 11.9 8.9 11.4 4.7

Fresnel lens + CPCI 11.9 10.7 11.4 5.9

Lenght Lens-receptor (mm)

Fig. 8. Performance comparison of the CPCI and CPCII.

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5. Conclusions The application of linear Fresnel lenses in combination with secondary CPC concentrators is a solution for achieving building integration for concentrating photovoltaic modules. The inuence of the design parameters which affect to a large degree the aptitude of static Fresnel lens concentrators for architectural integration has been studied. It was well known that compactness and optical concentration are opposite needs, one having to be given priority over the other depending in the desired design requirements. In a system designed for level compromise between compactness and concentration, the design characteristics considered optimum are a dimensionless radius of curvature R between 0.66 and 1.05 c (which implies a compactness between 1.25 and 1.75). Specically, for a lens with a dimensionless radius of curvature of 0.77, the maximum geometric concentration is 12.5 suns. With the objective of improving the uniformity of the concentrated illumination and increasing the acceptance angle of the system and the value of the average annual optical concentration, two solutions have been proposed. Both are based on the incorporation of a CPC secondary concentrator with an acceptance angle of 60. The rst Fresnel and CPC combination is designed to maintain a geometric concentration close to the maximum (12.5) throughout operation. Using this conguration the optical losses are pre-

dicted to be reduced by 6.4%, leading to an average annual optical concentration of 10 suns. The second Fresnel and CPC combination is proposed to achieve the maximum optical concentration with low optical losses for a Fresnel lens which satises the conditions necessary for integration. In this case the average annual optical concentration is predicted to increase to 11.1 suns, with optical losses 3.2% higher than the rst. The paper presented is an exhaustive study of a stationary wide angle Fresnel lens combined with a moving CPC to track the Sun during the year. This deep analysis of the optical system offers useful results for future practical applications. References
[1] Kritchman EM, Friesem AA, Yekutieli GA. A xed Fresnel lens with tracking collector. Sol Energy 1981;27:137. [2] Chemisana D, Ibez M, Barrau J. Comparison of Fresnel concentrators for building integrated photovoltaics. Energy Convers Manage 2009;50:107984. [3] Tripanagnostopoulos Y, Siabekou Ch, Tonui JK. The Fresnel lens concept for solar control of buildings. Sol Energy 2007;81:66175. [4] Whiteld GR, Bentley RW, Weatherby CK, Hunt AC, Mohring HD, Klotz FH, et al. The development and testing of small concentrating PV systems. Sol Energy 1999;67:2334. [5] Leutz R, Fu L. Segmented cone concentrators: optical design. In: 4th international conference on solar concentrators for the generation of electricity or hydrogen; 2007. p. 1614.