The thermal and electrical yield of a PV-thermal collector

Four numerical models have been built for the simulation of the thermal yield of a combined PV-thermal collector: a 3D dynamical model and three steady state models that are 3D, 2D and 1D. The models are explained and the results are compared to experimental results. It is found that all models follow the experiments within 5% accuracy. In addition, for the calculation of the daily yield, the simple 1D steady state model performs almost as good as the much more time-consuming 3D dynamical model. On the other hand, the 2D and 3D models are more easily adapted to other configurations and provide more detailed information, as required for a further optimization of the collector. The time-dependent model is required for an accurate prediction of the collector yield if the collector temperature at the end of a measurement differs from its starting temperature. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.