Study and Simulation of a Thermal Photovoltaic Hybrid Sensor

Abstract

Photovoltaic systems have undergone many recent devel-opments in terms of improving their energy efficiency. One of these performance improvement innovations is: the com-bination of thermal exploitation of solar energy with photo-voltaic exploitation on the same sensor for the simultaneous production of heat and electricity. This study aims to study the electrical and thermal perfor-mances of the system by evaluating the electrical and ther-mal efficiency as well as the electrical power for a hybrid photovoltaic/thermal sensor. In this work, the results of an experimental and numerical study on the thermal behavior of the hybrid sensor are presented and discussed. The experimental study made it possible to determine the electrical characteristics of the PV/T, the sunshine and the ambient temperature for a typical day. The mathematical equations which govern the operating principle of our PV/T are described and solved using the RANGE KUNTA method of order 4 for a numerical study of the efficiency of our PV/T. The numerical results obtained indicate a thermal efficiency of our PVT of 10.5% for a speed of 5 m/s and 7.8% for a speed of 1m/s. Increasing the number of exchange tubes to cover the entire surface of the sensor makes it possible to improve the minimum efficiency from 7.8% to 11.68% for a wind speed of 1m/s. The results obtained suggest that this type of sensor constitutes a good alternative to photovoltaic modules and conventional thermal sensors installed separately.