Simulation Study to Evaluate the Hybrid Photovoltaic - Thermoelectric Energy Generation System with Heat Recovery Mechanism

Abstract

ABSTRACT Electricity is one of the most common and widely used form of energy. It plays a vital role in improving the life of humans along with the economic growth of a country. Excessive heating of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels in a sunny hot weather is the main cause of power loss in solar PV system. The major purpose of this research is to minimize power loss in PV system due to increase in temperature of PV panels beyond standard operating conditions. Rise in the temperature of PV panels has severely affected the efficiency and voltage of the solar PV system. Thermo-electric Cells (TEC’s) are used to generate electricity by reutilizing the recovered waste heat from the PV panels due to rise in temperature. Seebeck effect demonstrates that the loss of electrical power due to heat is compensated by creating a temperature difference across TEC’s either through air-cooling or water-cooling mechanism. Electrical power generated from both the sources is common pooled. This hybrid power system is capable of feeding electricity to the grid. It is observed that the performance ratio of Solar PV system is 78.64% if this energy recovery technique is not utilized. Whereas with the addition of Water-Cooled Solar-TEC Hybrid system 53.5% energy is recovered and with Air Cooled Solar-TEC hybrid system 16.6% energy is recovered.