Demonstration of utilizing the waste or residual heat of a solar cell

General problem of the mono- and polycrystalline solar panels is the warming-effect. Basically, solar panels are installed and used at climatic and weather conditions, where the ambient temperature can grow up over 40 °C. Temperature of the solar panels themselves can reach higher value than it. Electric power of a solar panel is inversely-proportional to the temperature of the solar module. In other words, with increasing the temperature of the solar panel, electric energy generated by the module decreases. In this paper one form of energy transfer from the heat of the solar cell body to electric energy will be described. To reach the heat-electric energy transfer from an experiment a Seebeck-panel, a thermoelectric generator and the Seebeck-effect has been used. During the experiment both operation of the solar panel and operation of the Seebeck-type thermoelectric generator have been investigated. As an output of the measurement, the Seebeck-coefficient of the whole system using measurement data has been estimated [1-3].

I. Introduction (Heading 1)

One of the dedicated problems of the XXI. century is the excessive energy consumption. In order to serve the great energy needs, more and more power plants are installed worldwide. Many of these newly operational power plants are power plants based on renewable energy sources. Energy originated from the Sun can be utilized by numerous way. One possibility is to generate electricity from the solar energy using solar or photovoltaics panels. [5]