Theoretical and Experimental Study to Determine the Solar Concentration Limit with Passive Cooling of Solar Cells

This research is conducted to determine the limiting values of the geometric concentration when used with solar thermal system (thermoelectric generator) (TEG) to maintain desired hot and cold side temperatures for power generation. Experiments were conducted to determine the optimum solar concentration (aperture area/target area) using a thermoelectric generator sandwiched between the target plate and passive heat sink. A computer model is developed to solve the energy balance equations and find the optimum values for geometric concentration. It was observed that for the single configuration of heat sink and thermoelectric generator in a system, the trend of temperature difference between the hot and cold sides remain the same at different geometric concentrations. The optimum geometric concentration is determined for heat sinks in study. It is observed that with solar radiation intensity of 800 W/m2 and heat sink fin length of 0.15m the optimum geometric concentration is 13.