Adjustable Planar Lightguide Solar Concentrators With Liquid-Prism Structure

Research interests on sunlight applications are booming in recent years, due to the worldwide green-energy trends. Either using PV cells to store sunlight then convert to electricity, or to use sunlight for direct illumination source are among the many research projects which deserve investigation.In this research, we focus a design combined the above two features together: direct sunlight illumination, and store the sunlight for later usage. Our design structure is as follows:1. On the surface of outer layer, we use the liquid-prism structure to increase the angle tolerance range of solar concentrator; 2. Combine the micro structure of the solid-state prism and aspheric surfaces to produce a planar light guide structure, which compresses the plane light source into line light source, then guide the light into solar cells area; 3. Design a light switch using the liquid-prism of inside layer, and guides the sunlight into solar cells channel or indoor illumination channel.We apply it in the NLIS (R) developed at NTUST, not only retain the advantages of the static concentrator modules, but also eliminate the complex procedure of transmitting and emitting, reduce the loss and cost of energy transfer.