Effect of Thermoelectric Cooling System on the Performance of Photovoltaic-Thermal Collector: A Review

Renewable energy is critical for the mitigation of the dependency on fossil fuel-based energy. Solar energy has a vast potential compared to other renewable energy to replace fossil fuels. To harness solar energy, photovoltaic (PV) technology is utilised to convert light energy into electrical energy. The major drawback of PV is that its performance can deteriorate due to an increase in the temperature of PV panels. To address this limitation, solar thermal collectors have been developed to extract heat from PV surfaces purposely to cool them down. Numerous researchers in prior studies agreed that the combination of PV and the thermal collector as a whole system, also known as a photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) system, would be beneficial in increasing PV efficiency. There are multiple cooling systems that can notably reduce the temperature of PV panels. Water and air were used extensively before the emergence of advanced cooling systems such as nanofluid, phase change material, and thermoelectric (TE). The TE device can convert thermal energy into electricity using the Seebeck effect. Contrarily, it will act as a cooling system by supplying electricity due to the Peltier effect. The combination of PVT and TE modules is very beneficial in increasing energy production. This review paper mainly focuses on different designs of PVT-TE systems. The performance of PVT-TE is analysed using the first and second laws of thermodynamics. This paper found that the energy and exergy efficiency of PVT-TE is in the range of 23.21 - 81.47% and 6.39 - 16%, respectively.