Internal lighting by solar collectors and optical fibres

Sunlight concentration on small surfaces is widely studied [1-3], experimented and mostlyapplied to photovoltaic power generation [4-6]. More rarely these solar collectors arecoupled to optical fibres [7-9], with the advantage of always having a circular absorbershape. On the contrary the photovoltaic (PV) cell is typically squared and therefore itrequires a secondary optical system to reshape the image and to improve the lightdistribution uniformity.The introduction of optical concentrators, especially high concentration systems, has twopositive effects: it reduces the area of expensive solar cells and it increases their efficiency.The main reasons for this development are enhanced efficiency of CPV (concentratingphotovoltaic) systems due to new solar cells, improved size of PV installations andincreasing interest in alternative technologies, both due to government incentives and to thepoor Silicon availability. In general it can be assumed that an improvement in the volume ofthe collection system reduces the costs, given that the system provides a higher productionof energy.