A DEPLOYABLE AND RETRACTABLE FLEXIBLE BLANKET SOLAR ARRAY BASED ON A ROLLABLE TUBULAR COMPOSITE MAST

Kurzfassung

The present study addresses a deployable and retractable flexible blanket solar array that is structurally based on a rollable composite boom. For stowage the boom and the photovoltaic blanket are reeled onto the same core cylinder. Primary interest of the study is the impact of different blanket stowage methods and cell technologies on the performance of the array in terms of power per stowed volume (W/m³). A blanket design with rigid 3J-cells of 29.5% BOL efficiency is compared to a blanket with flexible cells and 20% BOL efficiency. In addition to a simply rolled blanket, a blanket with nesting cell strings is examined. It is found that the flexible cells offer very good performances at power levels below 6 kW with performances up to 75 kW/m³ (boom-blanket package only). Also nesting rigid 3J-cells show good values with up to 65 kW/m³ below 5 kW array power. However, the larger blanket area due to the lower areal power requires longer and heavier booms in comparison to simply rolled rigid 3J-cells. This compromises performance at higher power levels above 6 kW where simply rolled blankets with 3J-cells prove to be superior. Maxima are at 50 kW/m³ at 6 to 10 kW. An effective method to enhance performance at higher power levels is the use of two instead of one boom. The booms become smaller and can be packaged more compactly despite the increase in array width.