Concentrated PV (CPV) Systems

♤ Concentrated PV (CPV) systems concentrate sunlight on solar cells, greatly increasing the efficiency of the cells.

♤ The PV cells in a CPV system are built into concentrating collectors that use a lens or mirrors to focus the sunlight onto the cells.

♤ CPV systems must track the sun to keep the light focused on the PV cells.

♤ The primary advantages of CPV systems are high efficiency, low system cost, and low capital investment to facilitate rapid scale-up; the systems use less expensive semiconducting PV material to achieve a specified electrical output.

♤ Reliability, however, is an important technical challenge for this emerging technological approach; the systems generally require highly sophisticated tracking devices.