Parabolic trough photovoltaic thermoelectric hybrid system: Thermal modeling, case studies and economic and environmental analyses

In this work, a hybrid solar system, which consists of parabolic trough collector equipped with photovoltaic (PV) module and thermoelectric generators (TEGs), is studied. The aim of this work is to develop a new thermal modeling for parabolic trough photovoltaic thermoelectric (PTPVT-TE) system using thermal resistance analogy. The thermal modeling is simulated using MATLAB software, compared and validated against previous works from the literature. Case studies have been conducted on three countries of different climates: Lebanon (moderate), France (mild) and UAE (warm) to investigate the system performance. It is observed that the total annual energy generated by PV module and TEGs are 44.7 MW h and 1.8 MWh in Lebanon, 26.5 MW h and 0.8 MW h in France, 49.2 MW h and 1.9 MW h in UAE respectively. Also, the results reveal that the integration of TEGs to the PTPVT system leads to increase the average annual generated total electrical power by the system by about 1.8% and decrease the average annual heat rate delivered to the fluid by 1.9%. Furthermore, it was obtained that the PV layer increases the average total efficiency of the system by approximately 44.4%. Besides, economic and environmental analyses have been performed to expose the significant importance of this system. It is shown that the payback period of the system is 2.1 years, 2.4 years and 2.5 years and the annual amount of mitigated CO2 emissions is 81.4 tons, 5.7 tons and 79.5 tons for Lebanon, France and UAE respectively.