Enhancing the performance of photovoltaic operating under harsh conditions using carbon-nanotube thermoelectric harvesters

This paper proposes a novel configuration for enhancing the efficiency of photovoltaics (PV) operating in high-temperature environment using a nano-thermoelectric carbon nanotube-based harvester attached to the backside of the solar cell (SC). The attached harvester will not only extract heat energy from the cell but will also convert this wasted heat energy into electrical energy. The proposed configuration has been fabricated and tested experimentally, where I–V measurements have been conducted. An overall enhancement in SC efficiency of 50%, with respect to reference cell, has been achieved using the proposed harvester. In addition, the harvester itself provided a power in the range of hundreds of microwatts that can be utilized in various low-power applications.