Practical development of efficient thermoelectric-photovoltaic hybrid systems based on wide-gap solar cells

TL;DR

This paper models and experimentally validates thermoelectric-photovoltaic hybrid systems that recover heat losses in wide-gap solar cells, achieving efficiency gains up to 3.1% with Perovskites at typical operating temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces optimized bismuth telluride thermoelectric generators for hybridization with wide-gap solar cells and demonstrates their effectiveness through modeling and experimental validation.

Findings

Maximum efficiency gain of 3.1% with Perovskites.

Efficiency improvements are most significant at typical PV operating temperatures.

Experimental validation confirms the potential of thermoelectric hybridization.

Abstract

The decrease of solar cell efficiency with temperature is a known problem for photovoltaics (PV). Temperature sensitivity can lead to a considerable amount of energy losses over the lifetime of solar panels. In this perspective Hybrid Thermoelectric-Photovoltaic (HTEPV) systems, which recover solar cell heat losses to produce an additional power output, can be a suitable option. However only hybridization of wide-gap solar cells is convenient in terms of efficiency gains and deserves investigation to evaluate HTEPV devices effectiveness. In this work we report the modeling and the development of customized bismuth telluride thermoelectric generators, optimized to be hybridized with amorphous silicon (aSi), Gallium Indium Phosphide (GaInP) or Perovskites solar cells. The model results showed in all three cases efficiency gains with a maximum of +3.1% for Perovskites (from 16.4% to 19.5%). These enhancements were then experimentally validated for the case of Perovskites solar cells, for which maximum gains were found to occur at typical operating temperatures of conventional PVs. This experimental evaluation demonstrated in an accurate fashion the real potential of thermoelectric hybridization of solar cells.