title: Stationary nonimaging lenses for solar concentration.
abstract: A novel approach for the design of refractive lenses is presented, where the lens is mounted on a stationary aperture and the Sun is tracked by a moving solar cell. The purpose of this work is to design a quasi-stationary concentrator by replacing the two-axis tracking of the Sun with internal motion of the miniaturized solar cell inside the module. Families of lenses are designed with a variation of the simultaneous multiple surface technique in which the sawtooth genetic algorithm is implemented to optimize the geometric variables of the optic in order to produce high fluxes for a range of incidence angles. Finally, we show examples of the technique for lenses with 60° and 30° acceptance half-angles, with low to medium attainable concentrations.
authors.affiliation: Mechanical Engineering Department, Columbia University, 220 S. W. Mudd Building, 500 W120st New York, New York 10027, USA. pk2252@columbia.edu
authors.forename: Panagiotis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kotsidas
authors.forename: Eleni
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Chatzi
authors.forename: Vijay
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Modi