Performance evaluation of a photoelectric–thermoelectric cogeneration hybrid system

The current state-of-the art in photovoltaic technology observes that the photoelectric conversion efficiency decreases with increasing material temperature. A proposed solution is to use the thermoelectric effect as a heat pump to manage the excess thermal energy of a photovoltaic cell. Previous investigations into photoelectric–thermoelectric hybrid systems have been either limited to theoretical analyses or experimental set-ups in which …