Experimental Study on Solar Parabolic Dish Thermoelectric Generator

Abstract

The applications of solar dish and thermoelectric generator have the research potential as green and clean energy generation from solar thermal route. In this paper, an attempt has been made to conduct an experimental study on small scale solar parabolic dish thermoelectric generator. The solar parabolic dish collector is fabricated using an unused satellite dish antenna fitted with polished aluminum sheet as concentrator surface. Thermoelectric generator consists of commercial thermoelectric modules embedded between the receiver plate and water cooled heat sink which is placed on the focal plane of manual tracking parabolic dish collector. The concentrated solar radiation and water cooled heat sink is the driving potential to generate electricity, various operating parameters like receiver plate temperature, power output and conversion efficiency with respect to solar radiation are studied. It is found that the receiver plate temperature is significantly affecting the power output. Also, in this study it is identified to reuse the unused dish antenna for solar collector and coupled with commercial thermoelectric module is simple fabrication method easy to adopt in the rural techno craft for small scale power generator to meet the isolated energy demands.