A comparative study on two different configurations of hybrid photovoltaic thermal collector with experimental validation and uncertainty analysis

In addition to the electricity produced by photovoltaic cells, the use of a hybrid photovoltaic thermal collector (PV/T) can simultaneously produce thermal energy and reduce the energy loss from the photovoltaic module. There are many types of hybrid PV/T collector depending on the number of additional glasses, the configuration of the exchanger used, the nature of the heat transfer fluid, and so forth. In this article, we will study a polycrystalline photovoltaic module with a diode and a hybrid PV/T collector with glazed and unglazed configurations, a comparison of electrical and thermal studies is presented between these three systems under the climatic conditions of Ghardaia city (semiarid region). To this end, a numerical model have been developed and evaluated by means of a simulation in the MATLAB environment. In addition, it has been validated experimentally. The experimental results are in good agreement with those of simulation, the useful energy efficiency values are 6.78, 68, and 67.86% for the photovoltaic generator (GPV), unglazed hybrid collector (PV/T-I), and glazed hybrid collector (PV/T-II), respectively; otherwise, the energy losses for the same systems reach 93.22, 32, and 32.14%, respectively; therefore, the hybrid collector has the best overall performance compared to the GPV. The results also show the effect of additional glass on the useful energy of the hybrid collector under semiarid area climatic conditions.