Concentrator Photovoltaic System and its Advantages for Saudi Arabia: A Simulation Study

The efficiency of the Photovoltaic (PV) system found to be boosted when mirrors and tracking devices are used. For this purpose reflective optical devises are usually mounted on a PV panel to form a V-trough that helps focusing the incident solar radiation flux onto the PV panel and, hence, increasing the total output power. The main objective of this work is to perform an optimization to achieve a reduction in the overall geometrical size of the system and a decrease in the step size of its tracking system while increasing its output power. A numerical simulation to achieve the optimum condition for a low Concentrated Photovoltaic (LCPV) systems located in Saudi Arabia was undertaken. Five cities were chosen as a case-study for our simulation, these cities are; Riyadh, Jeddah, Dhahran, Aljouf and Sharoora. Two models were proposed based on the geometry of the system. It was found that the first model (partial exposure) showed an efficiency of 165% whereas the efficiency of second mode