Development of thermoelectric cooling system for BIPV module

This paper proposes the cooling system using thermoelectric element for improving the output of building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) module. The temperature characteristics in regard to improve the output of BIPV system has rarely been studied up to now but some researchers only proposed the method using a ventilator. The efficiency of this cooling system applied to a ventilator mainly depend on the weather such as wind, irradiation etc. Because this cooling system is so sensitive, that is always being set off by velocity of wind but is unable to operate in the nominal operating cell temperature (NOCT) which is able to make the maximum output. This paper proposes the cooling system using thermoelectric element so as to solve such problems. The temperature control of thermoelectric element can be controlled independently in the outside environment because that is performed by micro-controller. Also, it can be operated around NOCT through algorithm of the temperature control. Therefore, the outputs of the system are increased and the efficiency is risen. This paper proves the validity of the proposed method by comparing the data obtained through the experiment of the cooling system of BIPV using a ventilator and thermoelectric element.