Spectral Corrections Based on Air Mass, Aerosol Optical Depth, and Precipitable Water for CPV Performance Modeling

The performance of a concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) system is highly influenced by the spectral variations that are mainly caused by changes in air mass, aerosol optical depth, and precipitable water (PW). Therefore, a spectral correction has to be used in order to correct the incident irradiance and, hence, improve CPV performance modeling. A new procedure that uses a simple set of analytical equations that account for this effect is proposed in this study. A detailed description of how to extract the equations and coefficients of this method is also presented. The experimental validation and the comparative analysis with other methods reported in the literature demonstrated a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 0.8%, compared with 2.3% of the other methods.