Concentrated PV (CPV) is a solar technology that uses lenses or curved mirrors to focus sunlight onto small, and solar trackers and sometimes a cooling system to concentrate sunlight onto high-efficiency solar cells.
Reference Definition by Solareis.anl.gov: Concentrated PV (CPV) systems concentrate sunlight on solar cells, greatly increasing the efficiency of the cells. The PV cells in a CPV system are built into concentrating collectors that use a lens or mirrors to focus the sunlight onto the cells. CPV systems must track the sun to keep the light focused on the PV cells. The primary advantages of CPV systems are high efficiency, low system cost, and low capital investment to facilitate rapid scale-up; the systems use less expensive semiconducting PV material to achieve a specified electrical output. Reliability, however, is an important technical challenge for this emerging technological approach; the systems generally require highly sophisticated tracking devices.
Related Definitions in the Project: The Solar Energy
