Experimental investigation of water-based photovoltaic/thermal-thermoelectric hybrid system: Energy, exergy, economic and environmental assessment

The worldwide search for sustainable energy solutions has heightened the concentration on solar energy sources as an essential part of addressing climate change and maintaining long-term energy security. Combining the photovoltaic/thermal systems with thermoelectric generators (PV/T-TEG) stands out as a potential innovation that uses the functionality advantages of multiple energy conversion techniques. In this paper, a novel water-based photovoltaic/thermal-thermoelectric hybrid system (WPV/T-TEG) is proposed and designed to boost the solar energy conversion rate. Thus, the proposed hybrid system is tested under Algerian weather conditions. Through an experimental analysis, the performances of the proposed system have been compared to the standard PV module (SPV). It was found that the proposed WPV/T-TEG hybrid system produces about 29.04W of electrical energy and about 187.75Wh/day of average overall exergy per day, whereas this is higher by 13.67% , 21.09%,24.04%, and 95.07% compared to hybrid photovoltaic/thermoelectric (HPV/TEG), hybrid photovoltaic module alone (HPV), SPV, and thermoelectric module alone (TEG), respectively. During the production phase, the proposed WPV/T-TEG hybrid system was found to avoid about 38719kgCO2eqm−2yr−1 of emission. Overall, the proposed WPV/T-TEG hybrid system has the potential for future advancement in the solar harvesting approach. •The environmental and the exergy benefit of WPV/T-TEG systems are examined.•The WPV/T-TEG systems produce about 187.75 Wh/day of exergy.•The WPV/T-TEG system produces about 298.38 W of thermal energy.•WPV/T-TEG configuration can reduce the GWP amount by 1548.76 kg. CO2. eq.m−2. yr−1.