Use of a 2-layer thermoelectric generator structure for photovoltaics cells cooling and energy recovery

School of Engineering & Built Environment, Glasgow Caledonian University, 70 Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow G4 0BA, Scotland, UK

^* Corresponding author: Slawomir.Wnuk@gcu.ac.uk

Abstract

A 2-layer thermoelectric generator was tested as a solution to increase the output of a PV cell. A number of practical experiments were carried out on both single and two combined thermoelectric generator (TEG) configurations connected in series with photovoltaic (PV) cells and connected to a load independently from each other. Testing was performed using a class AAA solar simulator system Sol3A and under real outdoor weather conditions. The results show a reduction of the maximum cell temperature by 10.3 ° on average and at the same time an increase in the tested photovoltaics-thermo-generators (PV-TEGs) voltage output of the proposed hybrid systems by 28.56-30.54% compared to the plain PV cell. It was experimentally confirmed that the TEGs-PV structure performs better than the bare PV cell during decline of insolation utilising, in addition to the limited at this time solar energy, the heat accumulated by the multilayer structure components. Experiments showed that for the selected period of time (1600s) the energy output increased by 27.6% compared to a plain PV cell. For a constant level of artifical light (1000W/m²) the PV-TEG’s hybrid system showed an increase of energy yield of 3.1% compared to a plain PV system.