Towards-standardization energy conversion efficiency measuring system for thermophotovoltaic cells

F. Yi, J.M. Xu, B.X. Wang and C.Y. Zhao

Applied Energy, 2025, vol. 377, issue PD, No S0306261924020403

Abstract: Thermophotovoltaic (TPV) technology converts thermal radiation into electricity directly based on the photovoltaic effect of TPV cells, and have enormous potential applications in waste heat recovery, grid-scale energy storage, concentrating solar-thermal power generation, etc. Currently, the lack of a standardized method for measuring energy conversion efficiency of TPV cell hinders the objective assessment and comparison of TPV cells as well as the selection of cells for diverse applications. This work theoretically and experimentally demonstrates a towards-standardization TPV cell efficiency measuring system with near-perfect blackbody incident radiation spectra in the temperature range of 600–1600 °C, which is described by Planck’s law and exhibits stability, reproducibility, and color temperatures close to those in practical TPV applications. By conducting a systematic characterization of thermal radiation and TPV cell, we show a good agreement between the calculated and the measured incident spectra, and the prediction error of the TPV cell model is less than 1.7%. In addition, we propose to use the relative error due to the deviation from the perfect blackbody spectrum to quantify the quality of a realistic incident spectrum. Compared to the conventional experiment arrangement where cells are placed directly towards the opening of high-temperature blackbody radiation source, our system, featuring an optical path configuration with an off-axis parabolic reflector, significantly reduces the relative error by three to four orders of magnitude, and those in our system is less than 0.68% for the GaSb and InAs cells. Our thorough study and the developed measurement system will shed light on the urgently needed standard evaluation method of TPV cell efficiency, which can substantially facilitate the objective appraisal of the cell’s performance and accelerate the application of efficient TPV energy conversion system.

Keywords: Thermophotovoltaic; Conversion efficiency; Blackbody spectrum; Cell model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.124657

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