Subject: PVs and Mirrors

From: dlmrs@erinews (Kevin Kroha)
Date: 30 Jul 1995 04:47:26 GMT

Hey Everyone,

  Some time ago Someone posted a question concerning the viability
of using mirrors to augment PVs as a way of increasing kW/$ (since
mirrors are much cheaper than PVs) - his suggestion/question was
sorta shot down by someone who thought the aligment/tracking issues
would be too complicated and difficult to impliment to make this
cost effective.

 (Sorry that I can't find the original message to follow the thread, so
I'm starting a new one)

 Last week I visited a web site for an Australian solar developement
company - they have a two-sided PV which sits in a reflective dish as follows:

                     =============================
                                  --                                  
                                 ----                               
 --                             -    -                             --
    --                         -      -                         --
       --                     -        -                    --
          --                -            -               --
             --           -               -         --
                 -------                   -------

Where the ==== is the two-sided PV and the - indicates a curved mirrored
 suface, specially shaped to provide maximum concentration at a range
 of angles.

The company also manufactures PVs as shingles, and PVs whose conduction bands
 are impregnated into the silica using a special process which reduces surface
 lost for conduction. I'm not sure to what extent these three technologies
 are integrated - it seemed they were saying that all three are used
 together but the above shape doesn't seem to lend itself very well to
 shingles.  Unfortunately i didn't note the URL of the web page, and have
 no idea how i got there.

Anyway, I just thought that person would like to know that mirrors ARE being
 used in commercially available PVs to increase kW/$ as s/he suggested.

-kevin
[email-masked]