Cost studies on terrestrial photovoltaic power systems with sunlight concentration

A systems simulation program for comparing the energy costs associated with various alternative concentrating photovoltaic solar systems to energy costs expected with flat arrays is described. The application to linear focus and point focus concentrators is presented in a parameterized way. The results show that concentration offers a distinct cost advantage at high cell costs. However, they also show that concentration has the potential for being a viable alternative to the flat unconcentrated arrays for cell costs as low as $50/m2. Also, for a given concentrator cost, cell cost and cell cooling effectiveness, there exists an optimum effective aperture area to cell area ratio. For reasonable projected cell costs, this optimum ratio is below 30 for passively cooled devices and below 60 for actively cooled systems.