Solar energy offers a promising renewable energy source; however, it is expensive to store electricity from photovoltaics (PV), the most widely deployed solar electricity technology. Solar thermal energy technologies can be paired with inexpensive thermal storage, but are more expensive overall. We have developed a solar receiver that combines PV and solar thermal systems to efficiently convert solar radiation to electricity (to be used immediately) and thermal energy (to be stored and converted to electricity on demand). This paper describes the Hybrid Electric And Thermal Solar (HEATS) receiver and models its performance. An idealized model predicts high solar-to-electricity efficiency (35.2%) with high dispatchability (44.2% of electricity from thermal energy) at an operating temperature of 775 K. Modeling using measured performance values for HEATS subcomponents predicts 26.8% efficiency and 81% dispatchability with silicon PV and 28.5% efficiency and 76% dispatchability with gallium arsenide PV, both operating at 700 K.

太阳能提供了有希望的可再生能源。但是，利用最广泛使用的太阳能技术光伏发电（PV）来存储电能非常昂贵。太阳能热能技术可以与廉价的蓄热器搭配使用，但总体上更昂贵。我们已经开发出一种太阳能接收器，该太阳能接收器结合了PV和太阳能热系统，可以有效地将太阳辐射转换为电能（立即使用）和热能（存储并按需转换为电能）。本文介绍了混合电力和热太阳能（HEATS）接收器并对其性能进行了建模。理想化的模型预测，在775 K的工作温度下，太阳能发电效率高（35.2％），可调度性高（热能发电占44.2％）。