Imaging of planets is very difficult, due to the glare from their nearby, much brighter suns. Static and slowly-evolving aberrations are the limiting factors, even after application of adaptive optics. The residual speckle pattern is highly symmetrical due to diffraction from the telescope's aperture. We suggest to break this symmetry and thus to locate planets hidden beneath it. An eccentric p...

Concentration photovoltaic (CPV) systems are seen as a shortcut to achieve lower photovoltaic (PV) electricity costs/kWh. Within the available CPV configurations, V-trough systems are likely to succeed in the short term since they are less demanding in terms of tracking accuracy and due to their ability to make use of standard PV modules, a well-known and developed technology. However, silicon ...

A heat transfer model that couples radiation/conduction/convection heat transfer with electrical potential distribution is developed for a thermoelectric converter (TEC) subjected to concentrated solar radiation. The 4-leg TEC module consists of two pairs of ptype La1.98Sr0.02CuO4 and n-type CaMn0.98Nb0.02O3 legs that are sandwiched between two ceramic Al2O3 hot/cold plates and connected electr...

The characterisation of 85 rear-line-contacted silicon concentrator solar cells on one single wafer requires a fast, automated measurement system. In this paper an easy to use needle array measurement system is presented, which allows an automated sequential measurement of dark and light IV curves of all cells on one wafer. For acquiring IV curves under high illumination levels (up to 500 suns)...

We have developed a new communication library, called PM, for the Myrinet gigabit LAN card, that has a dedicated processor and on-board memory to handle a communication protocol. In order to obtain high performance communication and support a multi-user environment, we have co-desgined PM, an operating system realized by a daemon process, and the run-time routine for a programming language. Sev...

We report on the experimental performance of a solar aerosol reactor for carrying out the combined thermochemical reduction of CeO2 and reforming of CH4 using concentrated radiation as the source of process heat. The 2 kWth solar reactor prototype utilizes a cavity receiver enclosing a vertical Al2O3 tube which contains a downward gravity-driven particle flow of ceria particles, either co-curre...