article · Energy Reports
Solar photovoltaic modules lose efficiency under high operational temperatures, but pairing them with thermoelectric generators offers a method to harvest waste heat and generate additional electricity. However, microscopic surface roughness and uneven temperature distribution between the two technologies hinder efficient thermal coupling. Testing three thermal interface materials under outdoor air-cooled and water-cooled environments, combined with aluminium honeycomb cooling panels, demonstrated a notable reduction in temperature mismatch. A heat spreader proved to be the most effective interface material, achieving the lowest temperature and voltage disparities across both cooling setups. Under optimal conditions, photovoltaic power output increased by 1.8 percent and 2.5 percent under air and water cooling, respectively. Simultaneously, the thermoelectric generator produced 19.7 percent and 24.85 percent more power, representing an improvement of up to 50.6 percent over bare cell generation.
Excessive heat degrades solar panel performance and wastes usable energy. Coupling solar panels with thermoelectric devices can turn this excess heat into additional electricity, but poor contact between components often throttles the process. Demonstrating that simple thermal interface materials resolve these heat-transfer bottlenecks allows renewable systems to operate more efficiently and extract significantly more power from the same sunlight exposure.
This work demonstrates an applied, experimental-stage approach tested in outdoor environments. It could directly inform solar hardware manufacturers and thermal management engineers designing hybrid photovoltaic-thermoelectric systems. By adopting heat spreaders and honeycomb cooling structures, manufacturers of commercial and utility-scale solar equipment could improve energy yield, though moving from this outdoor test rig to standardised commercial modules will require further integration and durability assessment.
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Among the emerging renewable energy technologies, solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation is growing steadily in the mainstream energy supply mix contributing about 2.58% of the global total power generation by 2018 from 2.1% in 2017. The negative high PV module temperature effects continue to pose significant hurdles though being addressed through active and passive cooling methods. Thermoelectric generator (TEG) technology, given its modularity, augments well in cooling PV modules’ and generating additional electricity. However, thermal coupling of the two technologies has remained an impediment to their good performance due to the microscopic roughness of the PV and TEG surfaces. Non-uniform temperature distribution from the PV cells hinders efficient heat transfer thus affecting the performance the two technologies. In this study, PV cell temperature distribution have been evaluated analytically and experimentally under outdoor setup environments. Further, cell temperatures distribution is investigated using three thermal interface materials (TIM) under air- and water-cooled environments with aluminium honeycomb cooling panels as the cooling contact medium. Results show that the three TIMs substantially reduced the temperature mismatch effects with the heat spreader (HS) presenting lower temperature and voltage mismatch compared with the other two TIMs under both air- and water-cooled test conditions exhibiting preference. Based on the best observed conditions, PV module power output increased by 1.8% and 2.5% under the two test conditions while the TEG generated an additional 19.7% and 24.85% of power, respectively. This translated to an improvement of 11.3% and 50.6%, respectively, compared to the bare cell TEG power generation. The use of TIMs hence has the potential to mitigate thermal coupling challenges associated with PV–TEG systems improving their overall power output.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.egyr.2021.03.015
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