Experimental Analysis on Concentrated Photovoltaic Solar Panel

In recent years, renewable energy such as solar and wind energy is being used abundantly. Concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) modules ensure a more effective and greater power output than the conventional photovoltaic (PV) solar panel. The motivation of this research project was to design and construct a dual axis solar tracker to compare the power output of a conventional PV panel to a two-stage CPV panel. CPV solar panel is studied to achieve the maximum output and performance compared to the traditional PV panel. This work is centered on the investigation CPV and PV output energy. A dual axis solar tracker was designed to implement a two-stage CPV solar panel and a PV panel on it at the same time. A two-stage CPV solar panel consists of one linear Fresnel lens as a primary lens and a solar prism as a secondary lens, in order to concentrate the solar irradiance to gain more power output. The designed dual axis tracker includes a dc motor, a dual axis solar tracker controller, and a linear actuator, to track the plate regarding the elevation angle and azimuth angle. 6 months of data has been collected since January 2018. In this study, we were collecting global solar radiation, direct solar radiation, diffuse solar radiation, CPV produced energy, PV produced energy, elevation angle, and azimuth angle on an hourly basis. The data shows that the output power of the CPV panel is mostly related to the direct solar radiation. Therefore, when direct solar radiation is more than diffuse solar radiation, the output power of the CPV panel is more than the conventional PV panel. In contrast, when diffuse solar radiation is more than direct solar radiation, the output power of the PV panel is more than CPV panel. In contrast, since the diffuse radiation effects on PV panels more than CPV panels, when diffuse solar radiation is more than direct solar radiation, the output power of the PV panel is more than CPV panel.