Solar light is a source of green energy that poses no harm to the environment. The layout of a sunlight concentrator has a significant effect on prism-based sunlight concentration systems. This study develops a genetic algorithm that improves the layout efficiency and symmetry of sunlight concentration, by considering light reflection and refraction given the assumption of vertical incident light angle and known transmission rate. Results obtained from the experiments, which involved different settings, show that compared with the current design, more than 400% improvement in brightness and 80% in symmetry can be achieved by the proposed approach. In addition, sensitivity analyses are conducted to simulate different practical scenarios, including different incident light angles. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.