Hybrid solar-thermal approach for increased energy conversion efficiency

The Sultanate of Oman receives an incredible amount of sunlight, possibly the best in the world, which has yet to be explored fully. Increasing the generation of electricity from renewable resources and establishing the infrastructure are explicit goals of the vision document 2040 for Oman. Most of these initiatives use solar PV technologies and thermal energy extraction technologies independently. In this project, we propose to improve the efficiency of photovoltaic technologies using a novel electrical-thermal combination of a two-port energy collection system. By combining thermal energy extraction in tandem with PV systems, this approach could overcome the limitations of a single junction PV system. We plan to leverage our expertise in multijunction solar cells (MJSC), nanophotonic coatings, intermediate band solar cells, and deep semiconductor knowledge to build models, optimise parameters, and fabricate samples. In particular, we expect a rise in energy conversion efficiency (ECE) that can be applied to both conventional and emerging technologies, and that might be commercially scalable. We will use existing SQU techniques and a proposed dedicated computational workstation in order to complete the project and study.