Employing thermoelectric coupled solar PV hybrid system in non-conventional distribution generation

Abstract

The inflation of clean, efficient, sustainable, effective, secure, and reliable electricity demand has been triggered much interest for distribution generation at a miraculous and quickened pace. The necessity of reliability enhancement, diversity of fuel, cutback of greenhouse gases, severe weather fluctuation, etc. has stimulated the inclusion of Microgrid concept not only in utility level but also in customer and community level. Incorporation of solar photovoltaic (SPV) and thermoelectric (TE), termed as Solar photovoltaic-thermoelectric (SPV-TE) hybrid system is found to be a very promising technique to broadening the utilization of solar spectrum and enhancing the power output effectively-cum-efficiently. This hybrid architecture caters electrical energy with additional thermal energy that signifies upon harnessing of solar insolation in an exceptional way. This paper portrays on implementation of the aforementioned SPV-TEG coupled system in Non-conventional Distribution Generation in order to retrieve enough power from SPV array giving rise to higher active power delivery to the system and lower the reactive power absorbance by the system. The comparative analysis is done under subsystem such as SPV-TEG-Wind Energy system (WES) over SPV-WES on the basis of active and reactive power. The system is modeled, analyzed and validated under MATLAB-Simulink environment.