Experimental investigation of a novel low concentrating photovoltaic/thermal-thermoelectric generator hybrid system

This paper presents and explores a novel low concentrating photovoltaic/thermal-thermoelectric generator (LCPV/T-TEG) hybrid system. Unlike the conventional hybrid photovoltaic-thermoelectric generator (PV/TEG), the system mainly consists of a compound parabolic concentrator, a double glazing PV panel, a micro-channel heat pipe array, the TEG and the data acquisition and control system. The TEG is designed to be associated with the cold side of heat pipe array which acts as the cooling method of the LCPV/T system to improve PV efficiency instead of directly adhering to the backplane of the PV panel for practical applications. The outdoor experiment of the LCPV/T-TEG system was accomplished on the rooftop of a building in Beijing on a sunny day and the environmental conditions, the inlet and the outlet temperature, and output power of the LCPV/T and TEG were tested and analyzed. The daily average thermal efficiency is 45.0%, add to the daily average PV electrical efficiency 11.8% and daily average TEG electrical efficiency 0.23%, the daily average overall efficiency reaches 57.03%.Furthermore, the effects of the cooling flow on the system performance are also considered and the results show that the PV and TEG efficiencies both increase with the increasing of the flow. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.