Abstract
Hybrid photovoltaic/thermal systems have become an important energy technology due to their capacity of producing electrical and thermal energy simultaneously, their ease of integration into buildings and good overall performance. Conventional PV systems generate waste energy in the form of heat during the conversion of solar radiation into electricity. It has been shown that the electrical efficiency of PV panels decays with the rise in the PV cell temperature. Therefore, PV performance can be optimised if this heat is removed. Air and water are the most common media used for heat removal and the energy can then be used for heating applications in buildings. In the last five decades, researchers worldwide have carried out experimental studies, simulations and numerical modelling of different types of PV/T systems. In addition to water and air, heat removal methods such as refrigerants, PCM, heat pumps and nanofluids have been analysed. This work presents an overview and discussion of the research of the different PV/T thermal control systems of the last five years. The present study highlights key points of the different techniques that exist, such as overall efficiencies, parameters and configurations, type of system, the nature of work, country of development and applications. Based on this study, it was concluded that the PV/T systems are auspicious technology and that further work should be focused on the aesthetics of the systems to promote acceptance and improvement of the efficiency.
Highlights
The reduction of global greenhouse gas (GHG) has been an important target for the last decades
The results showed that the system can have a thermal efficiency of around 15% and an electrical efficiency of 10%, approximately
It is likely for the researchers to carry out studies on water-based and air-based PV/T systems due to their performance and easier integration into buildings
Summary
The reduction of global greenhouse gas (GHG) has been an important target for the last decades. Since the efficiency of a PV panel decreases when the temperature of the cell increases, removing heat from the photovoltaic module by having a fluid flowing through the collector avoids the loss of efficiency Combining these technologies alleviates building roof space issues that can occur with separate PV and thermal solar (Dean et al 2015). Photovoltaic/thermal devices are an efficient way of utilizing the solar energy, for this reason, it has been a research topic since the late 1970s when researchers such as Kern and Russell (1978) and Florschuetz (1979) carried out investigations on flat plate PV/T collectors Authors such as Agrawal and Tiwari (2010), Bhattarai et al (2012) and Adeli et al (2012) analysed water-based and air-based PV/T systems at the beginning of the decade, being those conventional systems the most studied during the subsequent years. Current research focuses on PV/T collectors cooled with water, bi-fluid and refrigerant
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