Experimental validation of a fully covered photovoltaic thermal compound parabolic concentrator system

The main advantage of PVT-CPC system is to generate both thermal and electrical energy at a low cost. Hence, an analytical expression of electrical and thermal efficiency of fully covered photovoltaic thermal compound parabolic concentrator (PVT-CPC) system has been derived as a function of climatic and design parameters. Further, an experiment has been performed for a typical day during the summer month namely 3rd and 4th May, 2016 at IIT, Delhi (India) for [case (A)] conventional CPC system and [case (B)] fully covered PVT-CPC system for thermal validation. The theoretical and experimental results for the outlet fluid temperature and electrical efficiency were verified with correlation coefficient (r) of 0.99. This indicates a close agreement between the theoretical and experimental results for thermal and electrical energy.