| Summary: | For the past twenty years, there has been increasing interest and investment in solar photovoltaic
(PV) technology. One particular area of interest is the development of concentrating PV
(CPV), especially for use in building integration. Many CPV designs have been developed and investigated.
This paper aims at producing a mathematical modelling using MATLAB programme to
predict the current-voltage (I-V) and power-voltage (P-V) characteristics of a static CPV. The
MATLAB programme could also simulate the angular response of the CPV designs-which has never
been explored in the previous literature. In this paper, a CPV known as the rotationally asymmetrical
dielectric totally internally reflecting concentrator (RADTIRC) was analysed. A specific RADTIRC
design that has an acceptance angle of ±40° was investigated in this paper. A mathematical
modelling was used to simulate the angular characteristics of the RADTIRC from −50° to 50° with
an increment 5°. For any CPV, we propose that the value of opto-electronic gain, Copto-e needs to be
included in the mathematical model, which were obtained from experiments. The range of incident
angle (±50°) was selected to demonstrate that the RADTIRC is capable of capturing the sun rays
within its acceptance angle of ±40°. In each simulation, the I-V and P-V characteristics were produced,
and the short circuit current (Isc), the open-circuit voltage (Voc), the maximum power (Pmax),
the fill factor (FF) and the opto-electronic gain (Copto-e) were determined and recorded. The results
from the simulations were validated via experiments. It was found that the simulation model is able
to predict the I-V and P-V characteristics of the RADTIRC as well as its angular response, with the
highest error recorded for the Isc, Voc, Pmax, FF and Copto-e was 2.1229%, 5.3913%, 9.9681%, 4.4231%
and 0.0000% respectively when compared with the experiment.
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