experimental characterization of a hybrid photovoltaic-thermal system with regeneration
abstract
currently, enormous quantities of waste energy are continuously discharged into
the earth’s atmosphere from various sources. for example, in a photovoltaic panel, about
85% of the incident light is either dissipated as heat or reflected from the pv surface
accounting huge losses. reflection losses in a pv panel can be up to 20% even with
antireflection layers inbuilt in them. in order to regenerate some of the optical losses in a
photovoltaic system, a new hybrid photovoltaic-thermal system with regeneration
(hpvt-regen) is designed and built in this research. the new hpvt-regen system
design allows the photovoltaic and thermal subsystems to function independently while
regenerating some of the optical losses by hybridization. the 3-d designs with complete
dimensions of the experiment components were made in catia v5. the components
were then purchased, fabricated and assembled with required instruments for detailed
experimental characterization. detailed experimentation of the hpvt-regen system was
conducted under indoor lab-scale solar simulator as well as under outdoor solar radiation
conditions of thunder bay, ontario. the results showed that the hpvt-regen system
regenerated 14% of the incident light, which was reflected from the pv panel and then
converted into electrical as well as thermal energy. from the reflected light, the indoor
test set up regenerated approximately 17 mw of electric power under lab simulator lights
contributing less than 1% more electric power per unit surface area whereas the outdoor
test set up regenerated approximately 137 mw of electric power under solar radiation
contributing approximately 3% more electric power per unit surface area. the hpvt-regen
system regenerated 34% more thermal power in both indoor testing as well as in
outdoor testing raising approximately 2.7 ⁰c of air temperature solely from the reflected
light. this research thesis presents and discusses the design and real-time performance
characteristics of the hpvt-regen system under various real-time operating conditions.