A novel photovoltaic device for improvements in solar energy collection
department or school: Applied Science, Faculty of
department or school: Engineering, School of (Okanagan)
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCO
creator: Westgate, Timothy M.
issued: 2019-06-26T22:27:21Z
issued: 2019
related degree: Master of Applied Science - MASc
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Governments around the world are striving to develop clean energy solutions to lessen their impact on the environment while addressing the growing need for energy generation. Solar technology has emerged as a major contender and will undoubtedly play a role in this endeavour. However, solar technology has been hampered by its fundamental challenge of cost versus performance. The proposed work recognizes this challenge and introduces a corner-cube-cell capable of being uniformly arrayed for scalability. It is shown that the corner-cube-cell facilitates low-cost implementations, due to its compatibility with standard silicon solar cells, and enables improved performance. Performance improvements shown in this work exhibit an increase in generated electrical power density of up to 3.80% at noon for an 8.29% increase in generated electrical energy density by the end of the day. This improvement comes about due to the geometry of the corner-cube-cell, which captures internal reflections and can exploit multi-channel maximum power point tracking. The corner-cube-cell also shows substantial improvements in generated electrical energy density during sun-rise and sun-set due to its protrusion out of the two-dimensional (horizontal) plane. These performance improvements result in a 6.10% increase in semi-annual generated electrical energy density over a conventional flat-lying solar cell. The introduced technology has strong prospects for realizing low-cost and high-performance solar power system implementations.
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/70827
note: A Novel Photovoltaic Device for Improvements in Solar Energy Collection by Timothy M. Westgate B.A.Sc., The University of British Columbia, Canada, 2014 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF APPLIED SCIENCE in THE COLLEGE OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Electrical Engineering) The University of British Columbia (Okanagan) June 2019 ©Timothy Westgate, 2019 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the College of Graduate Studies for acceptance, a thesis entitled: A Novel Photovoltaic Device for Improvements in Solar Energy Collection submitted by Timothy M. Westgate in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Applied Science . Dr. Jonathan F. Holzman Supervisor Dr. Wilson Eberle Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Liwei Wang Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Jake Bobowski University Examiner iii Abstract Governments around the world are striving to develop clean energy solutions to lessen their impact on the environment while addressing the growing need for energy generation. Solar technology has emerged as a major contender and will undoubtedly play a role in this endeavour. However, solar technology has been hampered by its fundamental challenge of cost versus performance. The proposed work recognizes this challenge and introduces a corner-cube-cell capable of being uniformly arrayed for scalability. It is shown that the corner-cube-cell facilitates low-cost implementations, due to its compatibility with standard silicon solar cells, and enables improved performance. Performance improvements shown in this work exhibit an increase in generated electrical power density of up to 3.80% at noon for an 8.29% increase in generated electrical energy density by the end of the day. This improvement comes about due to the geometry of the corner-cube-cell, which captures internal reflections and can exploit multi-channel maximum power point tracking. The corner-cube-cell also shows …
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2019-09
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0379648
language: eng
degree discipline: Electrical Engineering
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/70827