TY - JOUR
T1 - Evaluation of power conditioning architectures for energy production enhancement in thermoelectric generator systems
AU - Wu, Hongfei
AU - Sun, Kai
AU - Chen, Min
AU - Xing, Yan
PY - 2014/6
Y1 - 2014/6
N2 - A large-scale thermoelectric generator (TEG) system has an unbalanced temperature distribution among the TEG modules, which leads to power mismatch among the modules and decreases the power output of the TEG system. To maximize the power output and minimize the power conversion loss, a centralized- distributed hybrid power conditioning architecture is presented, analyzed, and evaluated for a TEG system. The novel architecture is a combination of a conventional centralized architecture and a fully distributed architecture. By using the proposed architecture, most of the harvested power is processed by the centralized stage while only the mismatched power among the TEG modules is processed by the distributed stages. As a result, accurate and distributed maximum-power-point tracking (MPPT) for each TEG module and single-stage power conversion between the modules and load can be achieved. It offers the benefit of implementing high MPPT efficiency and high conversion efficiency simultaneously. A 50-W TEG system composed of two TEG modules is built and tested. Experimental results show that the proposed hybrid power conditioning architecture generates up to 5% more energy for a temperature difference between the two modules of only 10°C.
AB - A large-scale thermoelectric generator (TEG) system has an unbalanced temperature distribution among the TEG modules, which leads to power mismatch among the modules and decreases the power output of the TEG system. To maximize the power output and minimize the power conversion loss, a centralized- distributed hybrid power conditioning architecture is presented, analyzed, and evaluated for a TEG system. The novel architecture is a combination of a conventional centralized architecture and a fully distributed architecture. By using the proposed architecture, most of the harvested power is processed by the centralized stage while only the mismatched power among the TEG modules is processed by the distributed stages. As a result, accurate and distributed maximum-power-point tracking (MPPT) for each TEG module and single-stage power conversion between the modules and load can be achieved. It offers the benefit of implementing high MPPT efficiency and high conversion efficiency simultaneously. A 50-W TEG system composed of two TEG modules is built and tested. Experimental results show that the proposed hybrid power conditioning architecture generates up to 5% more energy for a temperature difference between the two modules of only 10°C.
KW - Energy efficient
KW - Maximum-power-point tracking (MPPT)
KW - Power conversion
KW - Thermoelectric generator
U2 - 10.1007/s11664-013-2795-5
DO - 10.1007/s11664-013-2795-5
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:84901820416
SN - 0361-5235
VL - 43
SP - 1567
EP - 1573
JO - Journal of Electronic Materials
JF - Journal of Electronic Materials
IS - 6
ER -