Optical Module for Simultaneous Crop Cultivation and Solar Energy Generation: Design, Analysis, and Experimental Validation

This study proposes a rectangular-shaped optical module capable of simultaneously implementing crop cultivation and solar power generation. By employing a cylindrical Fresnel lens (CFL) array plate with a size of 100 × 100 mm2, multiple focal lines are formed, where some of the incident light transmits through the module while the rest is guided laterally through the rectangular lightguide structure. This guided sunlight is then concentrated by a cylindrical compound parabolic concentrator (CCPC) structure, resulting in a 20-fold concentration ratio, onto a 5 × 100 mm2 Si photovoltaic (PV) cell. To experimentally verify feasibility, both the CFL array plate and the lightguide plate were fabricated with three-axis machine tooling equipment and assembled. The power generated experimentally by the 5 × 100 mm2 Si PV cell was 54% of the expected value from the simulation results on the light-concentrated efficiency considering experimental conditions, while the results on experimental transmittance along with rotation angles were very close to the simulation results. However, overall, the tendency of the generated power along the rotation angles is close to the tendency of the light-concentrated efficiency along the rotation angles from the simulation. Additionally, this study dealt with further consideration to enhance light-concentrated efficiency, introducing a means to adjust the trade-off relationship between transmittance and light-concentrated efficiency.