Solar Hot Water Heating and Electricity Generation Using PV/T Hybrid System

Experimental work has been carried out to study the possibility of combining a conventional solar water collector with a hybrid device, developed previously and known as PV/T system, in order to obtain hot water with temperature above 40 °C. The effect of the combination on the productivity of hot water and the produced electricity was found. The formerly developed device, in which there was a multi-purpose solar collector, can produce hot water and electricity. It was connected to the conventional fin-tube collector in series in order to raise the product temperature to a higher level. This development was achieved for the first time as a combination between a PV/T and a conventional fin-tube collector. Instrumentation to measure temperatures, solar radiation, wind speed and flow rate was installed on the system. It was found that the water temperature was raised from 29 °C to 32 °C in the PV/T collector system and, after flowing through the conventional collector, it was raised to 50 °C and above. It was also found that the power efficiency in the case of water flow is always higher than in the case of no water flow.