Concentrator Photovoltaic System and its Advantages for Saudi Arabia: A Simulation Study

Year 2015, Volume: 5 Issue: 3, 732 - 738, 01.09.2015

Reem Mohammad Altuwirqi Mohammad Asharaf Gondal Hala Al-jawhari Anwar K Sheikh

Abstract

The efficiency of the Photovoltaic (PV) system found to be boosted when mirrors and tracking devices are used. For this purpose reflective and refractive optical devises are usually mounted on a PV panel to form a V-trough that helps focusing the incident solar radiation flux onto the PV panel and, hence, increasing the total output power. In this work, we performed a numerical simulation to achieve the optimum condition for a low Concentrated Photovoltaic (LCPV) systems located in Saudi Arabia. Five cities were chosen as a case-study for our simulation, these cities are; Riyadh, Jeddah, Dhahran, Aljouf and Sharoora. Two models were proposed based on the geometry of the system. It was found that the first model (partial exposure) showed an efficiency of 165% whereas the efficiency of second model (double exposure) reached 230%. Furthermore, it was found that the efficiency of the models did not depend on the tracking step which makes LCPV low in cost and less complex.

Keywords

LCPV; Simulated PV; Solar tracking systems; Solar energy in Saudi Arabia.

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