**2. Multicell concentrating assembly (MCA)**

The simple concept of proposed multicell concentrating assembly (MCA) is shown in **Figure 1**, for novel CPV module design. The concentrating assembly is based upon a multi-leg homogenizer concept which allows the rays, collected from specially arranged pair of solar concentrators, to be uniformly distributed and transferred to four MJCs. In a simple form, received parallel solar radiations are transformed into a concentrated collimated beam, with the help of a pair of parabolic concentrators which are arranged in Cassegrain form. The concentrated collimated beam strikes at the inlet aperture of multi-leg homogenizer where it is uniformly split and distributed among MJCs, placed at the four outlet apertures of the homogenizer. In conventional CPV module design, the homogenizer is placed to accommodate the tracking errors

**Figure 1.** Schematic of novel multicell concentrating assembly (MCA) for CPV module.

associated with the two axis solar tracking, during CPV operation. However, in the proposed novel multicell concentrating assembly (MCA) design, the homogenizer not only serves as part of conventional homogenizer, but it also helps to split the collimated beam received from a pair of parabolic concentrators. Such ray splitting is achieved because of the fact that the collimated beam, at the inlet aperture of homogenizer, makes an area concentration unlike conventional concentrating assembly design in which point concentration is achieved. By using the concept of concentrator photovoltaics (CPV), the expensive semiconductor multi-junction solar cell material was replaced with cheap solar concentrators. However, with the proposed multicell concentrating assembly design, the cost and assembly efforts of CPV modules will be reduced as a less number of solar concentrators will be needed for same capacity of the system.
