OTSun, a python package for the optical analysis of solar-thermal collectors and photovoltaic cells with arbitrary geometry.

Ray tracing software systems are commonly used to analyze the optics of solar energy devices, since they allow to predict the energy gains of devices in real conditions, and also to compare them with other systems constantly emerging in the market. However, the available open-source packages apply excessive simplifications to the model of light-matter interaction, making that the optical behaviour of the systems can not be properly characterized, which in turn implies disagreements between physical experiments and computer simulations. We present here the open source python package OTSun, which applies the Fresnel equations in their most general form, without further simplifications, and is suitable for the simulation of both solar-thermal and photovoltaic systems. The geometrical objects used in this package are created using the parametric 3D modeler FreeCAD, which is also a free and open source program and allows for the construction of arbitrary geometries that can be analyzed with OTSun. These, and other software capabilities, make OTSun extremely flexible and accurate for the optical analysis of solar devices with arbitrary geometry. Additionally, OTSun has a companion webtool, OTSunWebApp, that allows for the usage of certain features of the package without the need to install anything locally. We also show here two numerical experiments that we performed in order to validate the model and implementation: The analysis of the optical efficiency of a Linear Fresnel Reflector (with moving objects), and of a second surface mirror (with variable wavelengths). In each case, the numerical computations had deviations of less than 0.25% from reference models (either computed with another program or with exact formulas).

Tags
Data and Resources
To access the resources you must log in

This item has no data

Identity

Description: The Identity category includes attributes that support the identification of the resource.

Field Value
PID https://www.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240735
PID pmc:PMC7556463
PID pmid:33052977
URL http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC7556463
URL https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203
URL https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240735
Access Modality

Description: The Access Modality category includes attributes that report the modality of exploitation of the resource.

Field Value
Access Right Open Access
Attribution

Description: Authorships and contributors

Field Value
Author Cardona, Gabriel, 0000-0001-8845-4290
Author Pujol-Nadal, Ramon, 0000-0003-0523-6904
Publishing

Description: Attributes about the publishing venue (e.g. journal) and deposit location (e.g. repository)

Field Value
Collected From PubMed Central; DOAJ-Articles
Hosted By Europe PubMed Central; PLoS ONE
Journal PLoS ONE, ,
Publication Date 2020-10-01
Publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Additional Info
Field Value
Language English
Resource Type Article
keyword Q
keyword R
system:type publication
Management Info
Field Value
Source https://science-innovation-policy.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=dedup_wf_001::43e0176bda27d6c374a90e0a2641e4f9
Author jsonws_user
Last Updated 24 December 2020, 17:16 (CET)
Created 24 December 2020, 17:16 (CET)