Concentrator photovoltaic systems provide more efficient solar energy generation than conventional solar panels by focusing sunlight onto small but highly efficient solar cells. However, these systems require special mounting on precision pivoting trackers to follow the sun. The resulting cost and complexity has precluded rooftop installation and prevented the technology from achieving significant market penetration. Glint’s self-tracking concentrator photovoltaic system is a new design that eliminates the need for mounting on mechanical trackers. The system can provide the high-efficiency of concentrator photovoltaics in a flat, stationary, low-cost package that mimics a conventional silicon module, and can be mounted directly to commercial or residential rooftops or used with simple single-axis trackers.
Through this project, Glint Photonics developed this technology and evaluated its potential cost and performance. The team built three generations of prototypes, each of which achieved performance targets. Researchers operated a final prototype successfully for two months in a rooftop test. The prototype provided a module efficiency of 22.5 percent, similar to that of top-performing silicon panels. Optimized designs could can offer even higher efficiency. Cost and performance studies indicate that the technology could be especially valuable on area-constrained rooftops, where it could provide a higher capacity installation in the same physical footprint and share the balance-of-system costs, such as wiring, switches, battery bank, and solar inverters. However, further research and development would be required to enable higher technology and market readiness.
In addition to successfully demonstrating a new photovoltaic technology, the technical knowledge acquired in the project contributed to the development of two innovative energy-efficient lighting technologies that have strong commercialization opportunities and are the subject of ongoing research and product development efforts.
