The Effect of Solar Sphere Thickness on the Fluid to Generate Power

The high demand for renewable energy sources has given rise to many innovative systems that utilize natural resources to generate energy and supply electricity. The solar sphere system is an innovative system that collects the solar radiation incoming from the sun and concentrates it at a focal point on a multijunction device. The multijunction device consists of a high-efficiency solar cell that converts solar radiation into electricity. Many parameters in the solar sphere system affect the amount of power output and the associated efficiency leading to the improved overall performance of the system thus the aim of this paper is to examine and investigate the thickness of the sphere on the performance of the solar sphere filled with sunflower oil. The results obtained from the experiments showed that the thickness of the sphere significantly changes the value of power output and the associated efficiency of the system. From this result, it is found that decreasing the thickness of the sphere did increase the power output. Hence, the efficiency of the sphere increases when using a lower acrylic sphere thickness. The results can be interpreted as the thickness of the acrylic layer of the sphere getting lower, the more the sunlight is absorbed by the acrylic photons which subsequently leads to higher output power generation and higher system efficiency as compared to the conventional solar panel.