I will present different strategies to improve the efficiency and power yield of solar cells, both by reducing optical losses of the cell itself as well as by optical design of the surroundings. First, I will talk about effectively transparent contacts (ETCs), the only front contact technology eliminating close to all shading losses while providing high conductivity. Then, I will talk about spectro-angular solar irradiance and the search for ideal albedo materials which redirect light from the surroundings towards the solar modules. Last, free-space diffused light concentration based on the luminescent wave guide principle will be discussed.
KEYWORDS: Visualization, Solar radiation models, Eye, Solar energy, Eye models, Geometrical optics, Visual process modeling, Ray tracing, Solar cells, Image resolution
We explore the visual appearance of microscale silver grids for use in solar windows. The distortion of view is investigated by ray optical computations and experiments. We find that the visual appearance strongly depends on the geometric properties of the microcontacts (i.e., shape, aspect ratio, and periodicity) as well as on the viewing angle. From a perpendicular view, glass substrates appear marginally darker with microcontacts. In the case of effectively transparent triangular cross-section microcontacts, observation of scenes under a steep angle with respect to the substrate leads to the appearance of “ghost images.” Scenes are projected through redirection of rays by triangular cross-section microcontacts which can be tuned by adjusting aspect ratio and periodicity.
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