Thermodynamic Evaluation of a hybrid solar concentrating photovoltaic/Kalina cycle for full spectrum utilization

Current trends in energy supply and use are unsustainable, concentrating photovoltaics (CPV) would realize the cost-competent photovoltaic application in future, however, its low-temperature waste heat is commonly to heat or refrigerate. From the view of reducing the condensation pressure of Kalina cycle, a hybrid solar concentrating photovoltaic/concentrating solar power (CPV/CSP) system is proposed in this paper and has been capable of converting low-temperature waste heat (65℃) from solar cells into electricity with the exergy efficiency of 26.5%. Meanwhile, the simulation results point out that hybrid system can raise the solar-to-electricity efficiency of solar cells by approximate 2.4 percent points by heat recovery, leading to a feasible strategy for the decrease in costs of solar energy utilization.