Enhancing ultra-high CPV passive cooling using least-material finned heat sinks

Ultra-high concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) systems aim to increase the cost-competiveness of CPV by increasing the concentrations over 2000 suns. In this work, the design of a heat sink for ultra-high concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) applications is presented. For the first time, the least-material approach, widely used in electronics to maximize the thermal dissipation while minimizing the weight of the heat sink, has been applied in CPV. This method has the potential to further decrease the cost of this technology and to keep the multijunction cell within the operative temperature range. The designing procedure is described in the paper and the results of a thermal simulation are shown to prove the reliability of the solution. A prediction of the costs is also reported: a cost of 0.151$/Wp is expected for a passive least-material heat sink developed for 4000x applications.