Abstract
Photovoltaic/Thermal hybrid (PVT) systems have shown promise as a viable commercial and private source of renewable energy. The purpose of this meta study is to combine contemporary research findings in the area of Photovoltaic (PV) and Photovoltaic/Thermal Hybrid solar systems and attempt to offer general optimisation principles for future PVT devices. Design parameters with which we attempt to optimise through will include PV material choice, CPC inclusion and system temperature optimisation for operational lifetime gain and power yield. It was found that we can combine CPC, closed glass design, spiral web flow and m>0.003kg/s to optimise the c-SI based systems and obtain an overall PVT efficiency gain of 5.5±1.6%, and that mass flow rates exceeding 0.003 kg/s can increase longevity by 80% on average and increase electrical efficiency by 1.2% when compared to conservative lower mass flow rates. Hydrogenated amorphous silicon systems were also deemed to create less high-quality energy and overshooting required thermal needs when using personal/private power statistics as selection criteria.
Highlights
There has been growing interest and research effort into the optimisation of Photovoltaic/Thermal hybrid (PVT) solar collector systems as they are quite simple and cost-effective systems that are integrated into buildings, making them more readily useable for commercial and personal on-site energy production
The basic premise is that these systems provide both electric energy collected from the sun and absorb what the photovoltaic component cannot absorb through the thermal back sheet to heat a working fluid that can be stored for later use
Taking an average Sydney c-Si PV power output of 3.9kWh/day of high quality electricity[30], we find that a PVT system in the same conditions would produce much more than the required 3.297kWh/day that the average household needs, diminishing the benefit that a-Si:H systems greatly, despite their larger overall ηPVT
Summary
There has been growing interest and research effort into the optimisation of PVT solar collector systems as they are quite simple and cost-effective systems that are integrated into buildings, making them more readily useable for commercial and personal on-site energy production. This provides an economic tradeoff over higher quality multi-junction solar cell systems which are undeniably the better system but not at a point where production can be industrialised for widespread use and are susceptible to defect failures. The basic premise is that these systems provide both electric energy (typically referred to as “high quality” energy in literature, as it can be applied to more tasks or even re-routed to the grid) collected from the sun and absorb what the photovoltaic component cannot absorb through the thermal back sheet (component 6 in Figure 1) to heat a working fluid that can be stored for later use
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