A new type of low-concentrating solar photovoltaic/thermal integrated heat pump system (LCPV/T-HP) for generating electricity and heating residential water was developed. The solar photovoltaic/thermal collector with immovable parabolic reflectors concentrating the incident solar radiation into the photovoltaic modules, also acts as the evaporator of a heat pump. Refrigerant, R134a, absorbs the solar heat and evaporates inside the flow channels attached on the back of the photovoltaic modules, and then gets through a heat pump cycle to release heat to water in the condenser. The prototype was experimented in Nanjing, China. Results showed that LCPV/T-HP performed with high electrical and thermal efficiencies. The electricity generated by the LCPV/T-HP was 2.5 times that of the conventional non-concentrating PV system with the same areas of PV cells. Furthermore, the averaged coefficient of performance (COP) of the heat pump for heating water up to 50°C was 5.02 on a sunny day when the averaged ambient air temperature was 27 °C.
Keywords. solar photovoltaic/thermal; heat pump; solar concentrator; electrical conversion efficiency
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How to cite this article
Xu, G. and Zhang, X. (2010). 'Experimental Performance of a Low-Concentrating Solar Photovoltaic /Thermal Integrated Heat Pump System'. SET Proceedings, 9, pp. 1-7. https://doi.org/10.65582/set.2010.149
