The energy payback time (EPBT) of photovoltaic materials when recycled is analyzed. In particular we are interested in under what conditions recycling yields energy payback improvements equivalent to efficiency. The sensitivity to dynamic variables such as composition, efficiency, and recycling...

Static solar concentrators present a solution to the challenge of reducing the cost of Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) by reducing the area of solar cells. In this study a 3-D ray trace code has been developed using MATLAB in order to determine the theoretical optical efficiency and the...

A volume transmission phase holographic element was designed and constructed to perform as a building integrated photovoltaic concentrator. The holographic lens diffracts light in the spectral bandwidth to which the cell presents the highest sensitivity with a concentration factor of 3.6X. In...

In this paper, we use experimental data collected from an Austin, Texas smart grid test bed with a system-level battery energy storage model to assess the lifetime of batteries in a microgrid operating in islanded mode during a distribution-level outage. We consider a hypothetical microgrid...

Photovoltaic energy generation is envisaged as an efficient, natural and valuable energy source not only for outdoor but also for indoor applications, even if it is often difficult to give an adequate description of the indoor illumination conditions, and till now no (international) norms...

Self-consumption of on-site photovoltaic (PV) electricity in buildings is gaining interest as a way to accommodate high PV penetrations in the power system. On markets where there is no substantial feed-in support for renewables, there is also an economic incentive for PV self-consumption, as...

The interest in self-consumption of PV electricity from grid-connected residential systems is increasing among PV system owners and in the scientific community. Self-consumption can be defined as the share of the total PV production directly consumed by the PV system owner. With decreased...