Research and development of a compound eye photovoltaic glass for photovoltaic modules

To obtain a compound eye glass with good optical performances, optical simulation is carried out on the TracePro ray tracing software. The influence factors include the arrangement gap length (D), the chord height ratio (L / H), and the size of compound eyes (R). Compared to the conventional flat photovoltaic (PV) glass, the compound eyes PV glass has an increment of 6.41% on collecting radiant power, when the compound eyes arrange gapless with the L / H of 2.5 and R of 20.50 mm. Experimentally, the compound eyes PV glass samples fabricate with D of 0.584 mm, L / H of 2.5, and R of 4.1 mm and cover on silicon solar cells. In order to simulate the slanting of sunlight at early morning and later afternoon, the angle of incident light is changed by adjusting the detect platform angle under the standard AM1.5 simulator, and the absolute photoelectric conversion efficiency increment of the as-fabricated compound eyes PV glass achieves 1.03% in maximum, compared to that of the conventional flat PV glass. Moreover, the compound eyes glass does not cause obvious temperature rise. Therefore, the compound eye glass provides a promising enhancement on sunlight collection for PV modules.