Investigation of Electrical Performances for a Two-Terminal Integrated PV-TE System

Photovoltaic (PV) cell absorbs sunlight and converts a part of solar energy into electricity. However, more than 60% of solar energy is converted to thermal energy, causing heating of the PV cell. Coupling a thermoelectric (TE) with a PV cell will utilize the heat from the PV cell, and simultaneously cool the PV cell for better overall performance. Hybrid concentrated photovoltaic-thermoelectric system (CPV-TE), is an innovative way to reuse the waste heat. This work focused on the circuit structure and current matching between the PV and TE module, and designed a two-terminal integrated CPV-TE device, comparing the electrical performances with a four-terminal device. Moreover, simulations of heat transfer and electronic performances of two CPV-TE devices have been conducted. The results show that the current of the TE module in the two-terminal device is 20 times higher than that of four-terminal one. Besides, the two-terminal device increases the difference in temperature between the hot end and the cold end of TE module. As a result, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the two-terminal CPV-TE device has been improved by 2.4%.