Abstract:
To improve the comprehensive energy efficiency of photovoltaic pavements and dissipate heat for the photovoltaic cells, photovoltaic/thermal integration technology is introduced, forming pavement integrated/thermal (PIPVT) consisting of tempered glass panel, photovoltaic panel, serpentine copper tube, and acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) plastic base. In this study, COMSOL Multiphysics was used for simulation, the optical module, electrical module, and heat conduction and heat convection in the solid-state module were synchronously coupled to build the PIPVT multi-physical field simulation module. Based on the meteorological data of Beijing in 2022, the 15th day of each month was selected to represent the climate situation of that month for the prediction of power generation and heat collection performance. Results show that the light intensity is positively correlated with the power generation efficiency of photovoltaic module, but the high temperature caused by excessive light intensity will reduce the promoting effect on the power generation efficiency, and the power generation and heat recovery efficiency in winter are both lower. By comparing the results of simulation and experiment, the error is within 5%, which proves that the modeling is reasonable. In addition, taking Beijing University of Technology as an example, it is predicted that if all the campus pavements are covered with PIPVT, it can generate about 1.7 million kW· h of electricity in a year, which can satisfy the teaching and research electricity consumption of the main campus for more than three months. Meanwhile, it can heat 34 000 t water from 20 ℃ to over 30 ℃, which is of certain practical significance.