LAUSR

Photovoltaic (PV) systems are playing a more and more important role as a renewable energy supplier. However, their large-scale applications is still limited by low conversion efficiency and high land-use requirement, especially for those areas where land and solar energy resources are more important for agriculture. In this paper, we suggest a dish-type high-concentration photovoltaic system, with which the competition between sunlight for crops' growth and PV application is solved by beam-splitting techniques. A purposely-designed beam filter acts as a solar spectrum splitter, and the most effective bands of solar spectrum for plant growth are transmitted down to plants while the other parts are all directed to the solar cell receiver. The spectral and spatial distribution of radiant intensity is investigated by ray tracing method, and the quantitative evaluation of the beam splitting effect on crop growth and PV power generation is provided in detail. The results show that, on one hand, the proposed sy...