Improved energy conversion performance of a novel design of concentrated photovoltaic system combined with thermoelectric generator with advance cooling system

•A novel nanofluid-based PV/T-TEG hybrid system is proposed and analyzed.•Numerical analysis based on energy balance equations of the system is presented.•The performance of the hybrid system was simulated under real ambient conditions.•1 m2 of the proposed NCPV/T-TEG system is able to produce 2.3kWh of exergy daily.•The proposed NCPV/T-TEG system performs better than conventional PV and PVT system. Most of the incident solar energy on a PV panel is converted into waste heat. This consequently reduces the efficiency of PV system. Therefore, if certain portion of this waste heat can be utilized adding a thermoelectric generator (TEG) in the PV panel endowed by an efficient cooling system, the output performance of the system can be improved significantly. In this study, a new configuration of nanofluid-based PV/T-TEG hybrid system with cooling channel is proposed to convert certain portion of waste heat to electrical energy in order to improve the overall efficiency of hybrid system. Thus, the nanofluid acts as a coolant and absorbs the heat from the back side of TEG module raising its gradient of temperature, as well as the overall performance of the system. Through a numerical modelling approach, performance of the proposed innovative design has been investigated and compared with the conventional solar-harvesting technology systems. At the optimum value of solar concentration C, and maximum operating temperature of 35°C, the obtained results reveal that the electrical energy in NCPV/T-TEG configuration has been found higher by 10%, 47.7% and 49.5% against NCPV/T, CPV and CPV/TEG-HS systems, respectively. Overall, the proposed design of NCPV/T-TEG hybrid system has potential for further development in high-concentration solar systems.