Developing an Advanced PVT System for Sustainable Domestic Hot Water Supply

Abstract

Energy consumption is steadily increasing with the ever-growing population, leading to a rise in global warming. Building energy consumption is one of the major sources of global warming, which can be controlled with renewable energy installations. This paper deals with an advanced evacuated hybrid solar photovoltaic–thermal collector (PVT) for simultaneous production of electricity and domestic hot water (DHW) with lower carbon emissions. Most PVT projects focus on increasing electricity production by cooling the photovoltaic (PV). However, in this research, increasing thermal efficiency is investigated through vacuum glass tube encapsulation. The required area for conventional unglazed PVT systems varies between 1.6–2 times of solar thermal collectors for similar thermal output. In the case of encapsulation, the required area can decrease by minimizing convective losses from the system. Surprisingly, the electrical efficiency was not decreased by encapsulating the PVT system. The performance of evacuated PVT is compared to glazed and unglazed PVTs, and the result shows a 40% increase in thermal performance with the proposed system. All three systems are simulated in ANSYS 18.1 (Canonsburg, PA, USA) at different mass flow rates and solar irradiance.