Experts at HWU have extensive experience developing integrated Optical-Thermal-Electrical model for solar energy devices. This model has been extensively validated experimentally, and allows the detailed analysis of the spatial variation of the solar energy flux in the system and the resulting convective, conductive and long-wave radiative heat transfer for both solar thermal or photovoltaic applications. Natural and forced convection conditions within the system can be simulated to understand the loss mechanism. Figure 1 shows an employed mesh to model the CPV system. Figure 2 shows an isotherms and velocity vector diagram for an air filled and dielectric filled CPV system. An example of the developed 3D model using CFX and in-house developed 3D FE for the dielectric concentrating PV and HCPV system are shown in Figure 3 (a) and (b), respectively.
Simulation of figure 3(b):