Evaluation on the Performance of Photovoltaic–Thermal Hybrid System Using CO2 as a Working Fluid

Abstract

In this study, the CO2-based photovoltaic–thermal hybrid system has been investigated with an objective to increase the power generation efficiency in photovoltaic solar panel and to improve the performance of supercritical CO2 solar Rankine cycle system (SRCS). From a previous study, an improvement of 2% of power generation efficiency was confirmed via experimental investigation. In this study, the temperature distribution on the CO2-based photovoltaic–thermal hybrid system has been numerically and experimentally investigated and confirmed with referenced experimental results. Particularly, in this study, the one-dimensional (1D) calculation of CO2 flow in the cooling tube and three-dimensional (3D) calculation of temperature distribution on the surface of the photovoltaic solar panel are conducted. The typical summer and winter weather conditions are used as the calculation references to investigate the effect of temperature distribution of the photovoltaic solar panel. The results show that the trend of temperature distribution from calculation was confirmed with the experimental data both in summer and winter conditions. Furthermore, in summer condition, the CO2 temperature was increased to a maximum of 28 °C.