Abstract
Recent reports on improved efficiencies of solar thermoelectric generation (STEG) systems have generated interest in STEGs as a competitive power generation system. In this paper, the design of a combined cooling and power utilizing concentrated solar power is discussed. Solar radiation is concentrated into a receiver connected to thermoelectric modules, which are used as a topping cycle to generate power and high grade heat necessary to run an absorption chiller. Modeling of the overall system is discussed with experimental data to validate modeling results. A numerical modeling approach is presented which considers temperature variation of the source and sink temperatures and is used to maximize combined efficiency. A system is built with a demonstrated combined efficiency of 32% in actual working conditions with power generation of 3.1 W. Modeling results fell within 3% of the experimental results verifying the approach. An optimization study is performed on the mirror concentration ration and number of modules for thermal load matching and is shown to improve power generation to 26.8 W.
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Ohara, B., Wagner, M., Kunkle, C. et al. Residential Solar Combined Heat and Power Generation using Solar Thermoelectric Generation. J. Electron. Mater. 44, 2132–2141 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-015-3702-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-015-3702-z