Performance comparison investigation on solar photovoltaic-thermoelectric generation and solar photovoltaic-thermoelectric cooling hybrid systems under different conditions

ABSTRACT

The performance of solar photovoltaic-thermoelectric generation hybrid system (PV-TGS) and solar photovoltaic-thermoelectric cooling hybrid system (PV-TCS) under different conditions were theoretically analysed and compared. To test the practicality of these two hybrid systems, the performance of stand-alone PV system was also studied. The results show that PV-TGS and PV-TCS in most cases will result in the system with a better performance than stand-alone PV system. The advantage of PV-TGS is emphasised in total output power and conversion efficiency which is even poorer in PV-TCS than that in stand-alone PV system at the ambient wind speed u_w being below 3 m/s. However, PV-TCS has obvious advantage on lowering the temperature of PV cell. There is an obvious increase in tendency on the performance of PV-TGS and PV-TCS when the cooling capacity of two hybrid systems varies from around 0.06 to 0.3 W/K. And it is also proved that not just a-Si in PV-TGS can produce a better performance than the stand-alone PV system alone at most cases.

KEYWORDS:

• Stand-alone PV system
• thermoelectric generation
• thermoelectric cooling
• performance comparison

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Low-grade Energy Utilization Technologies and Systems (Chongqing University), Ministry of Education of China (Project No. LLEUTS-2016005).