Performance study of a vacuum photovoltaic/thermal collector with spectral selectivity

Xue Li, Ken Chen, Jianglei Michael Su, Hai Zhou, Zhongyi Ren, Bin Zhao and Gang Pei

Renewable Energy, 2025, vol. 239, issue C

Abstract: Photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) technology converts solar energy into both electricity and heat simultaneously, which can greatly improve the overall solar energy harvesting efficiency. However, the broad PV/T application scenarios are limited due to high heat losses when the temperature difference between the PV/T module and the surrounding environment is large. In this paper, a vacuum flat plate PV/T collector with spectral selectivity (VSSPV/T) is proposed to significantly reduce heat loss and improve solar efficiency. A calculation model for VSSPV/T is established based on the energy balance equations among different components using MATLAB to simulate the thermal and electrical performance. The VSSPV/T model ignores the heat convection and heat conduction between PV/T absorber and the surroundings. The results show that the average overall efficiency of VSSPV/T is 77.42 % in cold winter day when inlet temperature is at 50 °C, which is evidently higher than the 39.49 % of a conventional PV/T. Furthermore, the effects of solar cell coverage factor, tube distance, surface polishing, solar irradiation and mass flow rate on VSSPV/T performance are investigated. The performances of VSSPV/T based on TOPCon, CdTe and perovskite solar cells are compared. The overall performance of perovskite solar cell VSSPV/T has obvious advantages.

Keywords: Photovoltaic/thermal; Solar energy; Vacuum; Spectral selectivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:239:y:2025:i:c:s0960148124021980

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2024.122130

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