Luminescent solar concentrator
Monday, November 17th, 2008
Hi, Jeff,
I was wondering of you have had the time to look into this development.
It appears that it will become a real boon to back woods types. Can you make any guess as to when we might look for it to come onto the market? Next year? Five years?
Thanks for all you do!
Jim
Jim:
This specific article is referring to industrial concentrating solar collectors usually installed in large groups in dry desert locations. I am not aware of anyone using focusing PV solar modules in a residential application for the reasons discussed in this article – high cost, complex computer controlled tracking systems, and cooling systems to remove the very high heat behind these concentrators. The reason most of these systems are installed in remote dry locations is that all focusing type lenses requires a clear blue sky to operate, and will produce almost no output if sky is overcast.
At least one manufacturer is already manufacturing a tri-layer PV solar cell with each layer producing electricity from different wavelengths of light as each layer absorbs that part of the light spectrum it converts. The solar field is having lots of innovation these days, but don’t expect to see something you saw in a report about a research project to turn into something sold at Sears anytime soon.
Good Luck,
Jeff Yago
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