V3Solar has launched an innovative design to the conventional flat solar cells resulting to a twenty-fold increase in its output, owing to its concentrator lenses, conical shape, and revolving assembly.
The conical shape with 56o angle of the one-meter high, one-meter-wide V3Solar Spin Cells indulges maximization of harvesting light, omitting the need for an active sun-tracking device.
Each conical cell is composed of two shells: (1) an outer shell that contains concentrator lenses, and (2) an inner shell that contains the photovoltaic cells.
Solar concentrators are being used by conventional solar cells to increase gathering of light by focusing sunlight onto the photovoltaic cells.
Nevertheless, with 20X concentration under direct sunlight of around 260o temperature, it will only take around ten seconds for the solar cell to melt. This is where the spinning part comes in.
The conversion of light into electricity is about a thousand times faster than the conversion of light into heat energy (milliseconds) such that if you spin the solar cells fast enough, they can escape the latter conversion process and can tolerate 20X to 75X concentrators without exceeding 95oC.
Now, wouldn’t spinning the cells compensate the increase in conversion? Not so much, as the Spin Cells use a helium atmosphere inside them and magnetic levitation bearings to ease up the spinning process, which also allows automatic DC to AC power conversion.
This new solar cell design has potential and may soon become a standard provided that production costs will also be cheaper.
[via dvice]
