modeling and analysis of a hybrid photovoltaicthermoelectric solar cavity-receiver power generator

In the present paper, a cavity configuration for the hybrid photovoltaic-thermoelectric generator is proposed and investigated theoretically. the cubical cavity-receiver is packed with five photovoltaic modules and four thermoelectric generator modules which are stacked at the backside of each photovoltaic module. the solution algorithm using the equations of heat transfer and generated power of photovoltaic and thermoelectric generator modules is developed via matlab and simulated under various irradiation levels. it is shown that under 1000 w/m2 irradiation, the hybrid system can produce 536 mw which is 2.4 times the photovoltaic-thermoelectric generator alone. after modeling the system with fully open aperture, the cavity with a small aperture modeled to investigate the opening size effect on the hybrid system under non-concentrating irradiation. the results show the efficiency improvement of 27% by applying small aperture in the opening of the cavity. although the efficiency is increased by decreasing the aperture size, the total generated power for the wide aperture is larger than the generated power in the cavity with a smaller aperture due to more radiation absorption. by balancing between minimum re-radiation loss and maximum irradiation absorption for the cubic cavity, one can conclude that the optimum aperture opening area is 42.7% of cavity surface area.