Publication Date
2015
Document Type
Thesis
Committee Members
Amir Farajian (Committee Member), Hong Huang (Committee Member), James Menart (Advisor)
Degree Name
Master of Science in Renewable and Clean Energy Engineering (MSRCE)
Abstract
Routines have been written and added to the Wright State developed solar system simulation program called Solar_PVHFC to model incident solar radiation for a compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) that uses solar panels (photovoltaic panels) to produce electrical energy. Solar_PVHFC is a program that models a solar energy system composed of solar panels to produce electricity from the sun, hydrogen storage tanks to chemically store the energy produced by the solar panels, and fuel cells to convert between electrical and chemical energy when required. Solar_PVHFC features several adjustable parameters to model a solar panel, hydrogen storage, and fuel cell system. Now Solar_PVHFC can model CPC solar panels. The CPC portion of this program allows for building and modifying CPCs based on three input variables: the concentration ratio, the degree of truncation, and the absorber width. Included in the program is a crude cost analysis that can be used as an economic means of comparing variations of CPCs and comparing CPCs against conventional solar panels.
Solar_PVHFC models available solar radiation impinging on a solar panel using TMY3 data files. Inputs include the tilt and azimuthal angle of the panels, the geographical location of the panels, and the time period of the analysis. Because of this thesis work, Solar_PVHFC can now model panels that track the sun for any configuration of one or two axes of rotation and can even incorporate rotational limits. This thesis investigated panels using a fixed orientation, three different single axis tracking orientations, and two axis tracking. Any manufactured module with known specifications can be used as the solar panel, and the program calculates the current-voltage curve and maximum power point for that module on an hourly basis. This thesis investigated CPC and conventional solar panels with module efficiencies of 15.2%, 20.4%, 21.5%, and 28.3%
CPC solar panel simulations were run for concentration ratios of 2, 5, and 10. The degree of truncation ranged from no truncation with a truncated height ratio of 1, low truncation with a truncated height ratio of 0.75, moderate truncation with a truncated height ratio of 0.5, and high truncation with a truncated height ratio of 0.25. The absorbing width is the width of the solar cells at the bottom of the CPC and was scaled with the concentration ratio in an effort to maintain almost consistent total opening apertures. The absorbing width had values of 0.1657 m, 0.06627 m, and 0.03313 m with concentration ratios of 2, 5, and 10 respectively. Different mirror reflectivities and the use of cooling were also investigated.
The standard of comparison between different configurations of CPCs and conventional panels was the LCE (levelized cost of energy). This was calculated based on inputs of solar cell price and reflector material price on a per unit area basis. The LCE analysis used in this work only accounts for the solar cell and reflector costs and does not include costs associated with framing, tracking, wiring, inverters, maximum power point tracking, etc. It was thought that these costs would be similar for both the conventional solar panel system and the CPC solar panel system. This thesis' cost analysis only looks at the part of the system where the analysis used provides differences between the CPC and conventional solar system. The electric output per unit area was also used as a means of comparison between the two systems.
Many results are shown and discussed in the main body of this thesis with an exhaustive collection of results found in the Appendix. East-west, north-south, and two axis tracking showed that CPCs could significantly reduce the LCE of higher priced conventional panels using the same solar cell module. Fixed and vertical axis tracking did not prove very effective for CPCs. The only CPC system to achieve a lower LCE than the low efficiency,...
Page Count
168
Department or Program
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Year Degree Awarded
2015
Copyright
Copyright 2015, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commercial purposes and may be modified only if the modified version is distributed with these same permissions. All use must give me credit as the original author.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
