OTSun: An Open Source Code for Optical Analysis of Solar Thermal Collectors and PV Cells
Abstract
The OTSun project is a research project whose main objective is to develop an open source software to simulate the optical behavior of solar collectors. It consists on a ray tracing based on Monte Carlo methods. The trajectory of the light rays is determined from the Fresnel equations of electromagnetic optics. The geometry of the solar collector is generated by the free software FreeCAD, allowing the user to construct the geometry and visualize the scene. OTSun determines the optical efficiency of thermal solar collectors and photovoltaic solar cells. The OTSun library is hosted on GitHub and, to facilitate its use, a webtool has been developed. This paper describes the implemented algorithm, as well as the types of materials available in the library. Two simple cases are presented, step by step, for a correct simulation of thermal solar collectors and photovoltaic solar cells.