Concentrated solar power with photovoltaics

[Animal Farm Pig]

I'm interested in concentrating solar power with photovoltaics. The basic idea would be to take a discarded parabolic dish, cover the inside with reflective material, and put a small photovoltaic cell at the focal point.

What I'm wondering is how far typical photovoltaic cells can be pushed in terms of "excess photons"?

I would assume that (for example) a 3.5 m dish with an area of 9.6 m^2 concentrating light onto a solar cell 0.01 m^2 in area would be overkill.

For a given area of photovoltaic cells, is there some point at which more light gives no additional current output? Roughly at what point would this be?

[Spatula Tzar]

I'm not sure what the numbers are, but I bet the poor little cell would die quickly. You could however focus the light on a little steam or sterling engine with nice effect.

[Animal Farm Pig]

Originally Posted by Spatula Tzar

I'm not sure what the numbers are, but I bet the poor little cell would die quickly. You could however focus the light on a little steam or sterling engine with nice effect.

Yes, I bet it would die quickly as well. I've been trying to find some kind of numbers on efficiency vs. level of "concentration", but I'm not having much luck. The best I can seem to find is 2 to 100x is the maximum for "normal" cells .

Steam and stirlings are interesting, but I'm trying to think as simple as possible.

I need to go, and I might not be able to check back in for a few days, but if anyone has some insight, I'd much appreciate it.

[Spatula Tzar]

For simplicity, use a peltier junction. The datasheet will give nice maximum temperature values.

[Mantikore]

dont solar cells have some sort of limit to the intensity of light it can convert to electricity?

[AngryOnion]

Originally Posted by Spatula Tzar

For simplicity, use a peltier junction. The datasheet will give nice maximum temperature values.

Those are fun things to play with
I got one years ago from a climate controlled seat in a Lincoln Navigator.
Depending on current and air flow the seat was either cooled or heated.
Then I found out that if they were heated they could produce current as well.

[Nagasaki911]

I recently took a class on installing solar panels (apparently the industry term is "modules") and the sun's radiation beating down on it excites the proton's which flowing through the panel create electricity. Not going into details the maximum efficiency of a solar panel is around 25% (talking about the most expensive ones) which means focusing more sunlight on it wont create more electricity because its already operating at maximum efficiency when its in direct sunlight, the only thing you could do is warm it up to help it out a little bit.

The solar powered things you see with all the mirrors all over Europe are focusing the sunlight to create more heat on the tower, not the UV radiation.