Scientists from the University of Arizona created a holographic light collector which they claim is able to increase the efficiency of solar panels by up to 4.5%.
Presented in the paper “Holographic low concentration optical system increasing light collection efficiency of regular solar panels,” published in the Journal of Photonics for Energy (JPE), the collector is built with a low-cost holographic optical element (HOE) and a diffuser and can be easily embedded into conventional PV modules, according to its creators.
In this system design, the optical element is placed symmetrically at the center of the solar panel in order to increase the length of the effective light collection region. “The left half of the HOE diffracts light to a PV cell on the left side of the inactive module surface area (IMSA), and the right half of the HOE diffracts light to a cell on the right,” the academics said, adding that each hologram in the proposed system is able to separate the colors of sunlight and direct them to the solar cells within the solar panel.
