A review on the development of photovoltaic/concentrated solar power (PV-CSP) hybrid systems

As an emerging technology, the photovoltaic/concentrated solar power (PV-CSP) hybrid technology is considered as one of the research focuses currently in solar energy field, due to various advantages compared with the PV-alone and CSP-alone technologies. Compared with the PV-alone system, the PV-CSP hybrid system can produce electricity with better power quality. While compared with the CSP-alone system, the cost of power production can be reduced. The overall generating efficiency will also be greatly improved if the PV component and the CSP component of the hybrid system are “compactly” hybridized by PV-topping or spectral beam splitting (SBS) technologies. The development of PV-CSP hybrid systems accelerated in recent years with the increase of maturity of PV and CSP technologies. This paper presents an exhaustive review on the state-of-the-art of the PV-CSP hybrid technologies, including the non-compact hybrid system, the PV-topping hybrid system, the SBS hybrid system, and the hybrid system combining SBS and PV-topping technologies. Recent progresses of the key technologies of the PV-CSP hybrid systems, such as high temperature solar cells, spectral beam filters, and high flux heat exchangers, are generally discussed. After that, the research status and the hybrid system performance are summarized from the literature to provide a global point of view on the PV-CSP hybrid technology. The advantages and limitations of the hybrid technology are also concluded according to the literature reviewed.