CESARE Project

Acronym of Concentrated PV combinEd SolAR Energy system.

The research project CESARE has been inserted in the track d.2 of TUSCANY REGION Decree n. 5306 of 30 October 2007, sector Promotion and Support of Research, on the third integrative agreement of the Framework Programme Agreement "Research and technology transfer for the production system." Based on the project proposal, the research has set as its main objective the realization of the idea of exploiting solar energy with PV cells in combination with a heat system in order to get a complete system with zero emission.
The activities of the CESARE research project focused on the development of thermal-photovoltaic concentration technologies for the conversion of solar radiation into electricity and heat.
In the photo below you can see the detail of the row of photovoltaic cells illuminated by the parabolic collector, when the system is in operation.

Project partners:

• C.R.E.A.R. (Interdepartmental Research Centre for Renewable Energy – Faculty of Engineering, University of Florence);
• CNR-INO (then National Institute of Applied Optics INOA);
  
• FAIT  s.r.l.;
• C.E.V.I.T. (CONSORZIO EMPOLESE VALDELSA IDROTERMICI ).

The staff of the Solar Collectors Laboratory has studied the optical configurations of the concentrators. The basic element of the modular system is composed of a parabolic concentrator focusing on a pipe. For the analysis of geometric configurations to give the reflective element of the collector it was initially considered a reference geometry already used for the SALTO project.
All analyses on the optical behaviour of the solar collector have been simulated with Zemax software. The analyses made are similar to those described in the section of the parabolic collectors. In this case the target is not a pipe, but a row of PV cells composing the receiver.