An extensive indoor experimental characterisation program to investigate the heat loss from a point focus Fresnel lens PV Concentrator (FPVC) with a concentration ratio of 100× was performed for a range of simulated solar radiation intensities between 200 and 1000W/m2, different ambient air temperatures, and natural and forced convection. From the experimental program it was found that the solar cell temperature increased proportionally with the increase in simulated solar radiation for all experimental tests, indicating that conductive and convective heat transfer were significantly larger than the long wave radiative heat transfer within and from the FPVC system. For the simulated worst case scenario, in which the FPVC system was tested under a simulated solar radiation intensity of 1000W/m2 and ambient air temperature of 50°C with no forced convection, the predicted silicon solar cell efficiency in the FPVC system was reduced to approximately half that at standard test conditions

The recent emerging progress of quantum dot ink (QD-ink) has overcome the complexity of multiple-step colloidal QD (CQD) film preparation and pronouncedly promoted the device performance. However, the detrimental hydroxyl (OH) ligands induced from synthesis procedure have not been completely removed. Here, a halide ligand additive strategy was devised to optimize QD-ink process. It simultaneously reduced sub-bandgap states and converted them into iodide-passivated surface, which increase carrier mobility of the QDs films and achieve thicker absorber with improved performances. The corresponding power conversion efficiency of this optimized device reached 10.78%. (The control device was 9.56%.) Therefore, this stratege can support as a candidate strategy to solve the QD original limitation caused by hydroxyl ligands, which is also compatible with other CQD-based optoelectronic devices.

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Elsevier under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/A numerical investigation of the performance of a multi paned smart window integrated with water-cooled high efficiency third generation GaAsP/InGaAs QWSC (∼32% efficiency) solar cells illuminated by two-axis tracking solar concentrators at 500× in the inter pane space is presented. Optimising system parameters such as optical concentration ratio and coolant (water) flow rate is essential in order to avoid degradation in system performance due to high cell temperatures and thermal stresses. Detailed modelling of the thermo-fluid characteristics of the smart windows system was undertaken using a finite volume CFD package. Results of this analysis which considered the conductive, convective and radiative heat exchange processes taking place in the interior of the smart window system as well as the heat exchange to the internal and external ambient environment are presented