THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF CONCENTRATED PHOTOVOLTAIC (CPV) SYSTEM WITH HYDROGEN PRODUCTION AS ENERGY STORAGE

Abstract

This work is aimed to the development of compact CPV system with wireless master and slave control of the CPV field. A prototype of the CPV field consisting of four in-house built CPV systems is designed and developed with compact and smart two axis solar trackers. All of the CPV systems, including one with novel multi-leg homogeniser, are designed, analyzed with ray tracing simulation and experimentally tested for long term field operation. Through proposed long term electrical rating, it is found that the CPV systems have potential to be installed in urban region, with 2-3 times higher energy potential than the stationary PV systems, even in the tropical weather of Singapore. Furthermore, due to intermittency of the solar energy, the performance of CPV system is experimentally investigated for the Hydrogen production as energy storage and a design optimization and energy management technique is proposed for standalone operation of CPV system.