Ronnelid, M.; Karlsson, B.
April 1999
Solar Energy, vol 65-6, p. 343-351
The use of booster reflectors in front of solar collectors is an established technique for increasing the irradiation onto solar collectors. By using corrugated instead of flat booster reflectors it is possible to increase the annual irradiation onto the collector plane, thereby maximising the annual output from the collector–reflector arrangement. The paper includes a description of a ray tracing program which calculates the annual optical performance of a collector–booster reflector system with different V-corrugated reflectors. Calculations based on Swedish solar radiation data show that the use of a booster reflector with varying V-corrugations along the reflector, instead of a flat booster reflector, can increase the annual reflected direct radiation on to the collector by 10%. This is estimated to result in a 3% increase in the annual collector output. The ray-tracing calculations are compared with measurements of the reflection characteristics of single V-shaped reflector arrangements.
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