3
Flexible Spectrum Splitting Holographic
Concentrator--Luminit, LLC,
Mr. Kevin Yu, Principal Investigator, kyu@luminitco.com
Ms. Linh
Whitaker, Business Official, lwhitaker@luminitco.com
DOE Grant No. DE‑FG02‑07ER84775
Amount:
$750,000
The DOE has undertaken a new Solar
America Initiative (SAI) to accelerate the development of photovoltaic systems,
with the goal of making solar energy cost-competitive with other forms of
renewable electricity by the year 2015. In
support of this goal, this project will demonstrate a low-cost flexible Spectrum
Splitting Holographic Concentrator (SSHOC) that focuses light onto solar cells
with high efficiency, thereby increasing the output of existing photovoltaic
(PV) systems. The SSHOC, which is based
on four thin film holographic optical elements that are dispersion- and
aberration-corrected, is easily manufactured, has 99% diffraction efficiency, is
lightweight, and has low-cost. Phase I
demonstrated feasibility by theoretical analysis and computer modeling, and by
fabricating a compact experimental prototype.
Spectral characteristics of the prototype were investigated through a
series of laboratory experiments, performance tests, and the analysis of the
results. A number of advantages over
existing techniques and approaches were demonstrated: (1) highly stable spectral characteristics of
volume holographic multilayers, (2) compact packaging
into a single module for all wavelengths, and (3) tunable bandwidths over a
spectral range from visible to near IR. Phase
II will complete the SSHOC development and optimize the holographic optical
elements so that they will be mass producible and superior to state-of-the-art
technologies in terms of both performance and cost.
Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by
the awardee: The flexible SSHOC technology should
primarily benefit concentrator PV systems for use with multi-junction solar
cells, providing mass reduction, simplified deployment, and increased
efficiency and power output. Because it
is scalable, the system can be adapted to a variety of applications, from large
solar collectors in space to solar tiles for residential homes. The technology also find should find use in a
wide range of other applications such as optical imaging systems, optical
displays, virtual image displays, and optical instrumentation.