Hybrid Concentrator Photovoltaic-Thermal System using Low Temperature Differential Stirling Engine

A hybrid photovoltaic and thermal system consisted of dense-array concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) and gamma type low temperature differential (LTD) Stirling engine has been studied. Schmidt Analysis was applied to compute the performance of LTD Stirling engine while computational fluid dynamic was employed to simulate the heat transfer in the CPV receiver. The simulated result was subsequently used to determine the efficiency of hybrid system. Three major parameters to optimize the overall system performance are water inlet temperature, water flow rate, and CPV surface temperature. In our simulation, the highest efficiency of hybrid system ranging 37.8%-38% can be achieved at water inlet temperature to 90 °C. It has shown a significantly improvement by producing 10.1%-10.7% extra energy as compared to the efficiency of CPV system without waste heat recovery.