Kelzenberg, M.D., Espinet-Gonzalez, Pilar, Vaidya, N., Warmann, E.C., Naqavi, Ali, Loke, S.P., Saive, P., Roy, T.A., Vinogradova, T.G., Leclerc, C., Gdoutos, E.E., Royer, Fabien, Fikes, A., Bohn, F., Abiri, B., Hashemi, M.R., Gal-Katziri, M., Hajimiri, A., Pellegrino, S. and Atwater, H.A. (2018) Ultralight energy converter tile for the space solar power initiative. In 2018 IEEE 7th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, WCPEC 2018 - A Joint Conference of 45th IEEE PVSC, 28th PVSEC and 34th EU PVSEC. IEEE. 3 pp . (doi:10.1109/PVSC.2018.8547403).
Abstract
We have fabricated a functional prototype of an ultralight power converter tile; a modular building block for a space-based solar power system. The tile is ~10 × 15 cm in area, and weighs 4.5 kg/m 2 . It comprises a photovoltaic (PV) solar energy collector, a radio-frequency (RF) power converter, and an array of transmission antennas. The PV collector subassembly utilizes ~15x, 1D parabolic trough reflective concentrators with triple-junction (3J) solar cells. It has areal mass of ~0.8 kg/m 2 , 74% optical efficiency, and a peak specific power of ~230 W/kg. We demonstrated wireless power transmission over a distance of ~50 cm in our lab. Analysis of the sources of mass and inefficiency suggest a path towards achieving dramatically higher performance with future designs.
This record has no associated files available for download.
More information
Identifiers
Catalogue record
Export record
Altmetrics
Contributors
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.