Simple engineering design for complex thermoelectric generators based on reduced current approach

•Simple TEG design technique is introduced.•It is applied over wide range of temperature and zTzT that TEGs operate.•Its accuracy is investigated compared to a well-known design technique, RCA.•Compared accuracy of output is; current 99%, TE potential 88–96%, and power 88–96%.•New method can define TEG architecture with accuracy more than 97% compared to RCA.

Thermoelectric generators (TEGs) are niche candidate for the field of energy management as electrical generator devices. Generally, comprehensive and accurate design techniques for TEGs (thermoelectric generators), such as reduced current approach (RCA), are complex and time consuming processes. This study develops a simple, comprehensive and accurate TEG designing technique based on RCA. The proposed method can predict the most efficient TEG architecture with more than 97% accuracy comparing to the RCA over wide range of possible temperature and zTzT for present TEG applications. Moreover, the proposed method predicts the electrical outputs with high accuracies: electrical current with more than 99% accuracy, thermoelectric potential difference with 88–96% accuracy, and power output with 88–96% accuracy. This engineering approach can save significant amount of time and reduce the complexity of TEG in TEG design process. Moreover, this technique can be easily used without having a broad knowledge about design of TEGs.