Energy is essential for life. As stated in the Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform, ‘energy is an essential factor for sustainable development and poverty eradication’ [1]. Despite this fact, nearly 2.8 billion people around the globe lack access to modern energy services [1]. A recent report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) [2] indicated that the number of people without access to electricity has dropped below 1 billion for the first time in 2017, but predicts that around 700 million—most of which are residing in rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia—will still lack access to electricity in 2040. Another statistic shows that every year, close to 4.3 million people are dying prematurely mainly because of indoor pollution due to the use of unsustainable fuels for cooking and heating [1]. The World Bank states that having access to electricity has a great impact on the quality of life as it is essential for adequate health, education, entertainment, security, food production and more [3]. Finding alternative sources of energy to satisfy the global energy needs is therefore not just an environmental or economic case, but it is also a humanitarian one.

Achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 targets is a global responsibility and must be tackled as such through international collaborations rather than nationalistic solutions. It is frustrating to observe that from the first Conference of Parties (COP) to the last one held in Paris at the end of 2015, their outputs contain only non-binding references just to plead the concerns that are connected to renewable energy resources and energy efficiency. The problem regarding the access to energy services for sustainable development was not directly addressed. The Paris Agreement, for example, makes little reference, only in its preamble, about renewable energy as one of the factors that has been taken into account in coming out with the Agreement when it states: “acknowledging the need to promote universal access to sustainable energy in developing countries, in particular in Africa, through the enhanced deployment of renewable energy” [4]. This and other brief and small references to energy were agreed upon despite the fact that the energy sector: (i) contributed to 67% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in 2013, and (ii) releases the CO₂ emissions which have reached higher levels over the last 100 years [5].

Access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy is integral to global development in the 21st century [6]. The four dimensions of SDG 7 are affordability, reliability, sustainability and modernity. These different dimensions are not mutually exclusive. They overlap, and in some cases even entail each other [6]. According to the UN, the targets are: (1) by 2030, considerably increase the portion of renewable energy in the universal energy mix; (2) by 2030, assure global access to inexpensive, modern, and reliable energy services; (3) by 2030, in order to cater more access to clean energy research and technology; increase the worldwide collaboration that includes energy efficiency, renewable energy, and cleaner and advanced fossil-fuel technology, and boosts financing in clean energy technology and energy infrastructure; (4) by 2030, in terms of energy efficiency twice the universal rate of improvement; and (5) by 2030, upgrade technology and increase infrastructure development in order to supply sustainable and modern energy services for everyone in developing nations, especially, small island developing states, the least developed nations, and land-locked developing nations, as per their corresponding plans of support [7].

To mobilise efforts to achieve sustainable energy and the newly adopted SDG 7, the UN Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) global initiative had started and IRENA works as the initiative’s Renewable Energy Hub in order to gather forces to attain sustainable energy and the recently chosen SDG 7 [8]. In this endeavor, IRENA has stated the Global Renewable Energy Roadmap (REmap 2030), which investigates gateways to increase the portion of renewable energy in the global energy mix [8].

The earth receives enough solar energy in 1 hour to satisfy the global energy needs for 1 year; making it an especially attractive solution to reduce energy consumption in buildings and minimise greenhouse gas emissions [9]. The two main ways to convert this abundance of energy into useful energy are solar photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal technologies. The former utilises semiconductor materials such as silicon to convert the light energy into electricity while the latter collects and stores thermal energy for later use.

According to the IRENA, the era of solar energy has already begun and it hit much quicker than anyone foretold, as cumulative capacity reached 402 GW by the end 2017, which is more than 25 folds the capacity of only a decade ago [10]. In addition, it is leading the worldwide transformation through the ownership of energy. People are just about to realise the importance of this change. By now, the solar PV energy is the most extensively owned source of electricity in the world, in respect to the number of installations, and its usage is increasing [11].

Although the prices of PV modules are going down, partially due to an oversupply in the market; the overall PV system’s installation cost in numerous nations is still deemed to be quite expensive. Based on the IEA- Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (PVPS) analysis, the PV module contributed between 40% and 50% of the total cost of installation [12]. The IRENA [13] reported that numerous factors make differences of installation cost, which include: (i) the characteristics of the PV module (installation size, module type); (ii) the incentives employed in every country (policy, subsidies, tax exemption loan); (iii) the sectors (off-grid or on-grid, industrial or ground mounted, residential, commercial), and (iv) the countries’ PV market (maturity, size).

To draw the consumers to place any solar PV system, the cost of installation plays an important role [14]. With an aim to obtain the goals addressed in the prior sections, it is important to drag the installation cost down even more to stimulate more installations. This will assist furthermore to expedite the benefit of the solar PV in providing the worldwide electricity requirement from the current 2.1% [12] to a much higher percentage. By decreasing the use of costly PV material that takes up to 73% [15] of the cost of the PV module can be one of the means to reduce the cost, i.e., 36.5% of the overall installation cost comes from the PV material. A number of researchers have recommended combining a solar concentrator in the PV module in order to obtain this cut in PV material without jeopardizing the PV module’s output performance [16,17,18].

Concentrating PV (CPV), is one of the PV variations that has been explored with the aim of producing a low-cost highly efficient solar PV system, and is usually categorised on the basis of concentration ratio; high, medium and low concentration [19]. Technologies presented in high and medium concentration ratios can generate greater output, although their performance is dependent on solar tracking. Solar tracking in such concentrators introduces additional costs to the overall PV system, which is not desirable. Moreover, misalignment of the solar tracker can drastically reduce the overall system efficiency. The concentrators in the low concentration category, known as the low concentration PV (LCPV), either implement one axis solar tracking or are static and quasi-static (requiring seasonal adjustment) [19]. These static concentrators have high acceptance angle which not only eliminate solar tracking requirement, but are also able to concentrate diffuse and direct radiations making them more favorable for northern areas. Moreover, this high acceptance angle property would also allow the static concentrators to have a smoother response in cloudy conditions than high concentration PV (HCPV). However, the output of such concentrators is fairly low compared to high and medium concentrators. Additionally, the LCPV systems cannot use solar cells with higher efficiency and have to depend on silicon solar cells that are used in flat plate PV panels [20].