Smart luminescent solar concentrator as a BICPV window

Building integrated concentrating photovoltaic (BICPV) windows have attracted numerous studies in recent years. However, there is a tradeoff between the light transmittance and power generation efficiency in the design of BICPV window. In this paper, a smart luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) is introduced as the BICPV window. The proposed smart LSC system features on the combination of fluorescent dyes with thermochromic materials to enhance photoelectric conversion efficiency as well as form a dynamic response mechanism to ambient solar radiation and environmental temperature. In this study, a BICPV smart window system consists of the waveguide doped with organic dye Lumogen F Red-305 (BASF) and the thermochromic hydrogel membrane has been developed. The research on analytic design parameters is executed through optical simulation by ray tracing technology along with outdoor comparative experiments. From simulations for a smart LSC of 100 mm × 100 mm × 3 mm with a bottom-mounted solar cell of 100 mm × 10 mm, the optical effective concentration is found to be with the range of 1.23 to 1.31 when a highest gain of 1.26 in power over the bare solar cell is obtained from experiments.