A solar concentrator based on photonic angular selectivity

The design of concentrating optics for high-concentration photovoltaic systems involves the simultaneous optimization of many parameters including compactness, number of elements or interfaces, acceptance angle and irradiance uniformity. Using traditional optics, tradeoffs between these parameters become inevitable. Some of these tradeoffs can be avoided by using recently-developed angle-selective photonic materials to exploit the equivalence between angular restriction and concentration. We use these materials to experimentally demonstrate a novel design for a visible-spectrum optical concentrator. We demonstrate that the concentrator comes closer to thermodynamic ideality than standard CPV optics, and discuss their potential value in CPV systems.