Analysis of area saving and efficiency enhancement of photovoltaic system combined with thermoelectric generator

Abstract

The use of solar photovoltaic systems for home, industrial, and electric vehicles has grown dramatically in recent years. It generates energy from a natural source known as sunlight, and the use of irradiation to the solar panel generates heat, which correctly restricts the Photo Voltaic (PV) panel's power generation. When irradiation increases, output power grows in proportion to input power, but efficiency falls due to temperature. Heat affects the entire area of the solar panel that generates electricity, making the panels less efficient at producing energy. To emphasise, several cooling systems for reducing heat have been introduced. Likewise, heat can be reduced by transforming energy, such as thermal energy, into electrical energy. Thermoelectric Generators (TEGs) are required in PV panels to reduce heat through energy conversion. In this work, experiments were carried out to examine the efficiency of PV panels with and without TEG combination. This experiment demonstrates at of solar irradiation at 730 W/m2. As a result, PV-TEG with a heat sink reduces the temperature of the PV panel up to 6 °C. In addition, this combination improves the TEG voltage up to 0.7 V and provides overall gain up to 1.8 times that TEG alone. Also, the area will be conserved due to the use of TEG behind the PV panel, and experimental verification shows that 15 % of the space is saved, and the overall efficiency has been raised by 14 - 16 % when compared to the PV panel working alone.

Keywords

• Solar panel
• Thermoelectric generator
• Hybrid PV-TEG
• Resistive Load