LOW←TECH MAGAZINE English

How to Build a Low-tech Solar Panel?

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

George Cove stands next to his third solar array. Source: \"Generating electricity by the sun's rays\", Popular Electricity, Volume 2, nr. 12, April 1910, pp.793.

More efficient, less sustainable

Ever since Bell Labs presented the first practical solar PV panel in the 1950s, technological development has focused on reducing costs and increasing the efficiency of solar cells. According to these standards, researchers have made a lot of progress. The efficiency of solar panels increased from less than 5% in the 1950s to over 20% today, while the costs decreased from 30 dollars per watt-peak in 1980 to less than 0.2 dollars per watt-peak in 2020. Lower costs – to which higher efficiencies contribute – are considered of paramount importance because they allow solar PV panels to compete in the market with electricity generated by fossil fuels.

However, in terms of sustainability, very little progress has been made. To start with, ever since the 1950s, solar panels have been unfit for recycling, resulting in a waste stream that ends up in landfills. This waste stream will grow significantly during the coming years. Solar panels are discarded only after at least 25 to 30 years, and most have been installed only in recent years. By 2050, researchers expect that almost 80 million tonnes of solar panels will reach the end of their lives. ¹ ² ³ That is a significant waste of resources and a danger to the environment – discarded solar PV panels contain toxic elements and present a fire hazard.

The need for capital-intensive technology and long supply lines prevents the local production of solar panels by less affluent societies or DIY communities.

The manufacturing of solar PV panels is just as problematic. It produces toxic waste and requires a global supply chain, including capital-intensive factories, complex machinery, mined materials, and a steady input of fossil fuels. In life cycle analyses of solar panels, scientists calculate how much energy and materials are required to build a solar panel. However, they ignore the massive amount of energy and materials needed to set up and maintain the solar PV supply chain itself. ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹ ¹⁰ ¹¹ Consequently, these studies do not reveal the actual cost of solar panels in terms of fossil fuel dependence, emissions, and other environmental pollution. Furthermore, the need for capital-intensive technology and long supply lines prevents the local production of solar panels by less affluent societies or DIY communities.

Finding inspiration in the past

Are solar PV panels inherently unsustainable, unrecyclable, and dependent on high-tech and capital-intensive manufacturing processes? Or, is it possible to build them with local, recyclable and less energy-intensive materials and production methods? In other words, can we build low-tech solar panels? And, if so, what would that mean for costs and efficiency?

Before we try to answer this question, it’s important to note that the best low-tech alternative for a high-tech solar panel is often not a low-tech solar panel but direct use of solar energy. That is, putting solar energy to use without converting it to electricity first. For example, a clothesline and a solar thermal water boiler are much more efficient, sustainable, and economical than an electric tumble dryer and a water boiler powered by solar PV panels. Direct use of solar energy can happen with local materials, relatively simple manufacturing technologies, and short supply lines.

Nevertheless, in this article, I take the question literally: can we build low-tech photovoltaic devices, which convert sunlight into electricity? In a previous article, we have seen that history offers inspiration for building more sustainable wind turbines. Can history also inspire us to make more sustainable solar cells?

The prehistory of solar cells

Bell Labs’ solar PV panel, presented in 1954, came not out of nowhere. The silicon solar cell had its roots in less complex devices that could produce electricity from either light or heat.

In 1821, Thomas Seebeck found that an electrical current will flow in a circuit made from two dissimilar metals, with the junctions at different temperatures. This “thermoelectric effect” formed the basis for the “thermoelectric generator” – which converts heat (for example, from a wood stove) directly into electricity. In 1839, Antoine Becquerel discovered that light could also convert into electricity, and during the 1870s, several scientists proved this effect in solids, most notably in selenium. This “photoelectric effect” formed the basis for the “photoelectric generator” – which we now call a “photovoltaic” generator or solar PV cell. In 1883, Charles Fritts constructed the first photovoltaic module ever made, using selenium on a thin layer of gold. ¹² ¹³ ¹⁴

Throughout this period – and until the 1950s – the practical uses of thermoelectric and photoelectric devices were limited. Inventors built many experimental thermoelectric generators, usually powered by a gas flame, but their efficiency did not exceed 1%. Likewise, Charles Fritts’ solar panel, and the selenium solar cells made afterward, obtained just 1-2% efficiency in converting sunlight into electricity. ¹⁵ In short, the period before the 1950s doesn’t seem to offer much inspiration for building more sustainable solar PV panels.

A forgotten pioneer of solar power

However, the prehistory of the solar panel may be incomplete. In 2019, I received a mail from a reader of Low-tech Magazine, Philip Pesavento:

“I have been studying an early pioneer in solar cell technology from the pre-WWI era since the early 1990s. I am getting too old to continue doing anything with this, and even though there have been one or two scholarly articles about Mr. Cove, they have completely missed what he accomplished. I am enclosing a PDF of a PowerPoint that I put together back in 2015 and never presented to anyone. If you are interested in pursuing writing a paper yourself, I could mail you a thumb drive with all the background material that I have collected.”

If Philip Pesavento’s historical account and hypotheses are correct, George Cove set out to build a thermoelectric generator but accidentally made a photovoltaic generator – a PV solar cell. Although this happened in the early 1900s, Cove obtained a comparable power output and efficiency to the Bell Labs scientists in 1954. His design also showed much higher performance than the selenium solar cells built between the 1880s and the 1940s. ¹⁶ Philip Pesavento:

“It would be quite exciting to prove that relatively high-efficiency solar cells were invented 40 years before the development of silicon cells. More importantly, if it turns out there was a solar photovoltaic cell and panel system before World War I, it might also have some advantages concerning the cheapness of raw materials, low embodied energy to convert the ores into metallic materials, the efficiency of the final PV cells, and ease of fabrication.”

In other words, if Philip Pesavento’s historical account and hypotheses are correct, it may be possible to build low-tech solar panels.

George Cove’s solar electric generator

George Cove presented his first “solar electric generator” in 1905 in the Metropole Building in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Apart from an image, there are no data about this panel. ¹⁷ However, its power output and efficiency were remarkable enough for US investors to send an expert to Halifax. Based on this expert’s examination of the machine, they then brought Cove to the US (Sommerville, Mass.) to continue the development of his device.

Cove presented his second solar electric generator there in 1909. This 1.5m2 panel could produce 45 watts of power and was 2.75% efficient in converting solar energy into electricity. By mid-1909, Cove had moved to New York City, where he presented his third prototype, a solar array consisting of four solar panels of 60 watt-peak each, which charged a total of five lead-acid batteries. The total surface area was 4.5 m2, the maximum power output was 240 watts, and efficiency rose to 5% – similar to the first solar panel presented by Bell Labs. ¹⁸

Above: George Cove's first solar panel, demonstrated in 1905. Source: Technical World Magazine 11, nr.4, June 1909.

Above: Cove's second solar panel, with one section missing. Source: Technical World Magazine 11, nr.4, June 1909.

Above: George Cove's third solar panel. Source: \"Harnessing sunlight\", René Homer, Modern Electrics, Vol. II, No.6, September 1909.

Above: George Cove's third solar panel. The panels are now tilted at an angle as opposed to lying flat. Source: Literary Digest 1909, pp. 1153.

Above: One of the solar panels of Cove's third solar array, with the glass cover removed. Source: \"Harnessing sunlight\", René Homer, Modern Electrics, Vol. II, No.6, September 1909.

Although George Cove is absent from most historical accounts of solar power, his solar electric generator impressed some popular tech media of the day. For example, in 1909, Technical World Magazine wrote that “such a machine is cheap and indestructible as a kitchen range. Even in its present and somewhat crude and experimental state, given two days of sun, it will store sufficient electrical energy to light an ordinary house for a week. The inventor has proved this now for months in his establishment”. ¹⁹

Plugs set in asphalt

How did George Cove manage to build a solar panel that was 40 years ahead of its time? According to Philip Pesavento, who has a background in semiconductor engineering, Cove intended to build a better thermoelectric generator (TEG). He exposed his generator to the heat from a wood stove and direct solar energy – Edward Weston had made the first experimental solar thermoelectric generator (or STEG) in 1888. Cove’s intentions are also clear from how he described his device:

“The frame contains a number of panes of violet glass, behind which are set, through an asphalt compound backing, many little metal plugs. One end of the plugs is always exposed by sunlight, while the other end is cool and sheltered.”

Creating the largest possible temperature difference is key to thermoelectric power production, so Cove’s design makes sense. The problem is that when he measured the power output of his generator, it did not respond to heat like a thermo-electric generator was supposed to do. Initially, Cove observes that his invention uses both heat and light to produce electricity when exposed to solar energy:

“The principal part of my invention is the peculiar composition of the metallic plugs which are acted upon by the sun in such a way that the current is generated not only by heat rays but the violet rays as well”.

However, after further experiments with both the wood stove and solar energy, Cove states:

“When the machine is exposed to various sources of artificial heat it gives no electricity whatsoever. Other than the heat rays of the sun (short-wave infrared), perhaps the violet or ultraviolet rays are active in setting up the electrical current”.

The primary cell of Cove’s solar PV panel was a three-inch-long plug or rod of metallic composition, an alloy of several common metals. The 1.5 m2 panel had 976 rods, while the 4.5 m2 array had 4 x 1804 plugs. However, keeping the rods cool on one side and hot on another – separated by an asphalt layer – did not matter. What mattered is that Cove had unknowingly built a metal-semiconductor contact.

The semiconductor bandgap

George Cove did not understand how his solar generator worked, and neither did anyone else at the time. It was only with Einstein’s work on the photoelectric effect (in 1905) and later work in quantum mechanics (1930s and beyond) that the concept of a semiconductor bandgap was realized. Electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom in different “states”, which form regions that are called “bands”. These bands keep their electrons firmly in place. In between these bands are “bandgaps” – states in which no electron can be.

George Cove did not understand how his solar generator worked, and neither did anyone else at the time.

Conductors have no bandgaps, and so electrons flow through them. That is why a copper wire conducts electricity, for example. In insulators (like wood, glass, plastics, or ceramics), there is a very wide bandgap, which blocks the flow of electricity. Finally, in semiconductors, there’s a relatively narrow bandgap. That allows them to either act as an insulator or a conductor. Semiconductors can become conductors when they absorb a “photon” (an elementary particle of light) with an energy potential equal to or greater than the bandgap of the semiconductor material. ²⁰

The understanding of semiconductors led to the birth of the modern solar PV cell in the 1950s. It also improved the performance of thermoelectric generators – be it for different reasons. Thermoelectric generators do not take advantage of the semiconductor bandgap. However, semiconductors have higher thermo-voltages and lower thermal conductivities than metal and metal alloys with no bandgap, making thermoelectric generators more efficient.

The Schottky Junction

For a photovoltaic effect to exist, there must be some inhomogeneity in the system. In the 1950s, Bell Labs scientists managed to do this with the so-called p-n junction, which forms a boundary between a positively charged and a negatively charged semiconductor. P-type semiconductors have electron vacancies called “holes” (which attract electrons), while N-type semiconductors have extra electrons. At the junction between both is an electric potential.

However, it’s also possible to create a PV cell from a so-called Schottky junction, which connects a semiconductor with a metal. In this case, the metal functions as the n-type semiconductor. Philip Pesavento:

“My hypothesis is that George Cove stumbled upon a Schottky contact photovoltaic cell, decades before it was described by Walter Schottky. ²¹ There is the possibility of both photovoltaic (predominantly) and thermoelectric responses from these devices. The plug was an alloy of zinc and antimony – which we now know is a semiconductor. It was alternately capped by German silver (a nickel, copper, and zinc alloy) and copper on opposite ends. This formed an ohmic contact and Schottky contact, respectively. This is a photovoltaic device.”

Accidental discovery

According to Philip Pesavento, George Cove probably started with “German silver” as the negative material on both ends of the plugs, and an antimony-zinc alloy (ZnSb) as the positive material. These were the best available thermoelectric materials at the time:

“He probably ran out of German silver and substituted copper to finish making up a bunch of plugs since the difference in thermoelectric voltage between using copper and German silver was small. Then, during testing, Cove noted that these plugs (with a German silver cap at one end and a copper cap at the other end) gave a much greater voltage: 100s of mV’s versus the usual 10s of mV for a thermoelectric generator.”

What happened? By using copper, Cove had unknowingly built a Schottky junction. That converted his thermoelectric generator into a “thermophotovoltaic generator.” Such a device works the same as a photovoltaic solar cell but on a different wavelength. The solar spectrum covers a range of approximately 0.5 to 2.9 electron-Volts (eV), from infrared to ultraviolet. A semiconductor with a bandgap between 1 and 1.7 eV efficiently converts visible light into electricity (a photovoltaic generator) – while a semiconductor with a bandgap between 0.4 and 0.7 eV efficiently converts short-wave infrared solar energy into electricity (a thermophotovoltaic generator).

Above: This drawing from [Cove's 1906 patent](https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/bc/bb/50/6683e8b44edd4c/US824684.pdf) shows the zinc-antimony alloy “b”; the german silver (ohmic) end cap “c”; and the copper or tin (Schottky) end cap “f”. All these are press-fit because soldering the connections lowered the efficiency.

We now know that ZnSb – the negative material in Cove’s plugs – is a semiconductor with a bandgap of 0.5 eV. That largely explains why the inventor initially observed that his solar generator converted both heat and light into electricity. A thermophotovoltaic generator matches not only the infrared tail of the solar spectrum – it also matches the direct spectrum of a burning flame or a red hot emitting surface which is heated by burning wood or natural gas. It also converts the lower portion of the visible spectrum into electricity, be it very inefficiently.

According to Philip Pesavento, Cove then managed to refine the composition of the alloy close to Zn4Sb3 – a zinc-antimony alloy with proportions of 4 parts zinc to 6 parts antimony. That, we now know, is also a semiconductor. However, it has a bandgap of 1.2 eV – very close to the bandgap of silicon (1.1 eV). Consequently, it turned his thermophotovoltaic generator into a photovoltaic generator:

“In his enthusiasm, Cove probably made up a larger number of plugs and somehow got the proportions “wrong” on one batch. He then measured an even larger voltage. Finally, he made a careful study of zinc-antimony alloys and found that the 40-42% range zinc alloy gave the highest voltage (compared to 35% zinc in ZnSb). Having – accidentally – discovered Zn4Sb3, the higher bandgap of this semiconductor meant that it no longer worked when it was exposed to the heat from a wood stove. However, it worked even better when it was exposed to solar energy – because it was now converting far more of the visible spectrum of sunlight efficiently into electricity.”

Using colored glass filters, George Cove determined that most of the response was from the violet end of the spectrum and only a little from the so-called heat rays. His earlier PV plugs had responded equally well to heat rays and violet rays, while the older thermoelectric generators (German silver at both sides) did not respond to the violet rays at all.

Bring back the Schottky solar cell?

Schottky junction solar cells have commanded only a small amount of attention from researchers and corporations – few solar cell designs use metals in the active region, other than for contacts. ²² Nevertheless, Philip Pesavento believes that it would be worthwhile to attempt to fabricate some Schottky solar cells according to Cove’s design:

“If it could be demonstrated that Zn4Sb3 (bandgap 1.2 eV) can be used in a photovoltaic cell, there is a good chance that such a solar cell design will be sustainable. It would be a good candidate for a quick EROI and have an acceptably long operational life with a surplus energy output over several decades. It’s astounding that everyone seems to have missed this material and its application to photovoltaic cells and that no development has been done – even after researchers briefly recognized it as being a possible option in the early to mid-1980s. It fits in the category of a premature discovery which should mean it could be developed very quickly in this day and age.”

Apart from solar PV, Philip Pesavento sees potential in thermophotovoltaics for a wood stove, solar thermal, or dual junction tandem applications, using ZnSb instead of Zn4Sb3. Furthermore, if the plug-type solar cells prove to be effective, he believes that they would allow line concentrator solar collectors – such as parabolic troughs or non-imagining CPC concentrators – to be built at greatly reduced costs.

Low-tech manufacturing

The primary advantage of Cove’s design would be its low-tech fabrication method. In the 1970s and 1980s, scientists investigated Zn4Sb3 for use in photovoltaics and concluded that the material’s “obvious advantages are apparent simplicity and relatively low temperature of the preparation procedure.” ²³ The melting point for Zn4Sb3 is 570 degrees Celsius, while it’s 1,400 degrees for silicon.

Researchers studied metal-semiconductor junction solar cells based on other types of semiconductors than Zn4Sb3 in the 1970s. Again, their motivation was the simple and cost-effective fabrication procedure compared to silicon p-n junction solar cells at the time. ²⁴ ²⁵ Schottky cells do not require a high-temperature phosphorus-diffusion step, which ordinarily creates the n-layer of the p-n junction in silicon today. This alone reduces the energy input into the solar cell production process by 35%. ²²

During the 1980s, researchers made important advances in silicon p-n junctions, and interest in alternative configurations waned. However, there has been renewed interest in recent years. For example, research into graphene/silicon Schottky solar cells concludes that “simple and cost-effective device fabrication that does not require high temperatures is one of the advantages.” ²⁶ In other recent studies, scientists conclude that Schottky-type “selenium devices are… extremely simple and cheap to fabricate”. ²⁷ ²⁸ ²⁹ ³⁰

Easier recycling

Another advantage of Schottky solar cells may be easier recycling. Silicon modules are sandwiched between two laminate encapsulant layers (usually EVA, an ethylene/vinyl acetate copolymer). These layers are essential to ensure module service lifetime. ¹ ² ³ To recycle the silicon – the most valuable component of a solar panel – these layers need to be separated, but burning them also destroys the modules. Silicon cells can only be recycled by a combination of thermal, chemical, and metallurgical steps. That is an expensive process with an impact on the environment. Although you can find statements claiming that around 10% of solar panels are “recycled", they are more likely to be “downcycled”. The modules are shredded, and the resulting material is used as a filler material in asphalt and cement industries.

In contrast, the solar cells built by George Cove were entirely recyclable. They required no protective layer and did not even contain solder. Philip Pesavento:

“If you were to build the cells exactly the way Cove did by press-fitting the caps and then overwrapping them with wire to try to keep them tight, they would also be easier to recycle, being strictly a mechanical operation, no chemicals need to be involved. It would be labor-intensive to put them together and take them apart again, but it could be automated, too.”

Pesavento believes that it’s also possible to build flat solar cells from Cove’s material. However, whether or not those would need a protective layer that interferes with recycling remains to be seen. In the 1970s, Schottky solar cells based on other materials did not always need protective layers to reach more than 20 years of life expectancy. ²⁴

Efficiency

If we could build more low-tech solar panels, how efficient could we make them? According to Philip Pesavento, Schottky cells are slightly less efficient for the same materials than p-n junctions because p-n junctions generate a higher voltage – they get more of the energy in the photons they absorb.

“When every bit of efficiency counts, you do that. If making solar cells easier to manufacture using manual or artisan methods is your goal, the Schottky diode would be a more logical choice.”

On the other hand, it may be possible to build Schottky cells thinner than silicon solar cells – and that would increase their efficiency. Philip Pesavento:

“I have not found the specific numbers for the parameters – carrier velocity, recombination lifetime, absorption coefficient – to say this unequivocally. But the fact that Cove made such long skinny cells and got as high efficiencies as he did bodes well for making them thinner.”

Again, recent research into Schottky cells based on other materials seems to confirm this. For example, recent experiments with Schottky selenium cells brought layer thickness back to only 100 µm, compared to between 200 and 500 µm for silicon cells. ²⁷ ³¹ Scientists also reached 17% experimental efficiency for a graphene/silicon Schottky cell, up from 1.5% ten years earlier. ²⁶

We can also question the current obsession with higher efficiencies. Many people will argue that if low-tech solar panels are less efficient, we would need more solar panels to produce the same power output. Consequently, the resources saved by low-tech production methods would be compensated by the extra resources to build more solar panels. However, efficiency is only crucial when we take energy demand for granted, sacrificing some efficiency may gain us a lot in sustainability.

What happened to George Cove?

If Cove’s solar panel was so revolutionary, why is it forgotten? On this question, Philip Pesavento’s research material reads like a crime novel. Cove’s attempt to produce and market his solar energy device failed in mysterious ways.

The inventor became involved with a stock manipulator – Elmer Burlingame – who in 1909 and 1910 issued stock from businesses that were not his, including Cove’s start-up the Sun Electric Generator Company. In October 1909, Cove was allegedly kidnapped, and his life was threatened if he did not cease the development of his solar invention. However, the police dismissed Cove’s kidnapping as a hoax. In 1911, both Cove and Burlingame were arrested for stock fraud and spent a year in jail. Although Cove worked on other inventions after that, none of those were related to solar energy. ³²

In October 1909, Cove was allegedly kidnapped, and his life was threatened if he did not cease the development of his solar invention.

Was George Cove a charlatan? Was he the victim of one? Or was his reputation destroyed because the solar electric generator threatened other companies’ interests? There are many historical examples of suppression of technological innovations by large US corporations. George Cove was active in the same period as the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, whose unscrupulous practices against competitors are well-documented. If Cove’s solar electric generator worked, it could have reduced the growing demand for Edison’s coal and oil-fired power stations. ³² Earlier, in the 1880s, Edison had bought the company that produced the best thermoelectric generator at the time – Clamonds’s Improved Thermopile – and subsequently stopped the development of the machines. ³³

More Mysteries

However, while it’s tempting to see George Cove as a victim, we can only speculate. Philip Pesavento’s archive material contains more mysteries, such as Cove’s patent – applied for in 1905, granted in 1906. In his patent, the inventor describes the making of his Zn4Sb3 plugs in detail, which helped Pesavento to calculate the power output and efficiency of the solar arrays. However, Cove describes these plugs for converting heat from a wood stove into electricity, which is not compatible with his choice of material. To make the stove generator work, it required ZnSb plugs with a bandgap of 0.5 eV. Philip Pesavento:

“Was this misdirection on the part of Cove to prevent folks from copying his stove patent and getting it to work? I don’t know.”

Even more surprisingly, an image that shows Cove standing beside one of his solar panels also appears in John Perlin’s 2013 historical overview of solar power Let It Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy. However, the solar panel in the image is attributed to Charles Fritts, the inventor of the selenium solar cell. Furthermore, George Cove himself has disappeared from the image. Excerpts from the book, as well as the photo, have appeared on several websites. Philip Pesavento was not surprised when I got back in touch:

“I made this discovery several years ago. I guess that somebody badly needed an image of Fritts’ solar panels, found this image, and then photoshopped George Cove out of it. After all, Cove is totally unknown and when known is thought to have invented a solar thermoelectric generator, not a solar PV panel. If you look closely at the two photos, you can see that the top of the right column portico behind him was cut and pasted to where Cove had been standing, it’s not quite right in its perspective.”

Update: Bellingcat untangled the mystery of the image.

Weckend, Stephanie, Andreas Wade, and Garvin A. Heath. End of life management: solar photovoltaic panels. No. NREL/TP-6A20-73852. National Renewable Energy Lab.(NREL), Golden, CO (United States), 2016. ↩︎ ↩︎
Xu, Yan, et al. “Global status of recycling waste solar panels: A review.” Waste Management 75 (2018): 450-458. ↩︎ ↩︎
Sica, Daniela, et al. “Management of end-of-life photovoltaic panels as a step towards a circular economy.” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82 (2018): 2934-2945. ↩︎ ↩︎
Hornborg, Alf, Gustav Cederlöf, and Andreas Roos. “Has Cuba exposed the myth of “free” solar power? Energy, space, and justice.” Environment and planning E: Nature and space 2.4 (2019): 989-1008. ↩︎
Cederlof, Gustav, and Alf Hornborg. “System boundaries as epistemological and ethnographic problems: Assessing energy technology and socio-environmental impact.” Journal of Political Ecology 28.1 (2021): 111-123. ↩︎
Bartie, N. J., et al. “The resources, exergetic and environmental footprint of the silicon photovoltaic circular economy: Assessment and opportunities.” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 169 (2021): 105516. ↩︎
Powell, Douglas M., et al. “The capital intensity of photovoltaics manufacturing: barrier to scale and opportunity for innovation.” Energy & Environmental Science 8.12 (2015): 3395-3408. ↩︎
Dehghani, Ehsan, et al. “An environmentally conscious photovoltaic supply chain network design under correlated uncertainty: A case study in Iran.” Journal of Cleaner Production 262 (2020): 121434. ↩︎
Carvalho, Maria, Antoine Dechezleprêtre, and Matthieu Glachant. Understanding the dynamics of global value chains for solar photovoltaic technologies. Vol. 40. WIPO, 2017. ↩︎
Dehghani, Ehsan, et al. “Resilient solar photovoltaic supply chain network design under business-as-usual and hazard uncertainties.” Computers & Chemical Engineering 111 (2018): 288-310. ↩︎
Kumar, Abhishek, et al. “Economic viability analysis of silicon solar cell manufacturing: Al-BSF versus PERC.” Energy Procedia 130 (2017): 43-49. ↩︎
Fritts, Charles E. “On a new form of selenium cell, and some electrical discoveries made by its use.” American Journal of Science 3.156 (1883): 465-472. ↩︎
Effect of Light on Selenium During the Passage of An Electric Current*. Nature 7, 303 (1873). ↩︎
Green, Martin A. “Silicon photovoltaic modules: a brief history of the first 50 years.” Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and applications 13.5 (2005): 447-455. ↩︎
Perlin, John. Let it shine: the 6,000-year story of solar energy. New World Library, 2013. ↩︎
Selenium Cells, Thomas William Benson, 1919. ↩︎
Extrapolating from the performance of the next panel, we can guess that this one had a power output of about 25W and just under 3% efficiency. ↩︎
Cove claimed to have built an even larger panel of 9 m2, but no image has survived. It was said to have had a power output of 768 watt at 8% efficiency assuming 100 W/ft2 solar insolation. This array consisted of 8 panels with a total of 14,432 plugs. ↩︎
Winthrop Packard, Technical World Magazine 11, nr.4, June 1909. ↩︎
Why don’t we use conductors for solar panels? When light hits a conductor surface it mostly reflects, and little or no energy is absorbed. Furthermore, in conductors, the free electrons move randomly, there is no flow of current, no directional capacity. ↩︎
Cove was not the first, though. Charles Fritts’ solar cell was also based on a Schottky junction. ↩︎
Byrnes, Steve. “Schottky junction solar cells.” (2008). ↩︎ ↩︎
Tapiero, M., et al. “Preparation and characterization of Zn4Sb4.” Solar Energy Materials 12.4 (1985): 257-274. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0165163385900516. See also: Mozharivskyj, Yurij, et al. “A promising thermoelectric material: Zn4Sb3 or Zn6-δSb5. Its composition, structure, stability, and polymorphs. Structure and stability of Zn1-δSb.” Chemistry of Materials 16.8 (2004): 1580-1589. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1787&context=chem_pubs ↩︎
Rothwarf, A., and K. W. Böer. “Direct conversion of solar energy through photovoltaic cells.” Progress in Solid State Chemistry 10 (1975): 71-102.. ↩︎ ↩︎
Anderson, W. A., A. E. Delahoy, and R. A. Milano. “An 8% efficient layered Schottky‐barrier solar cell.” Journal of Applied Physics 45.9 (1974): 3913-3915. ↩︎
Yavuz, Serdar. Graphene/Silicon Schottky Junction Based Solar Cells. University of California, San Diego, 2018. ↩︎ ↩︎
Todorov, Teodor K., et al. “Ultrathin high band gap solar cells with improved efficiencies from the world’s oldest photovoltaic material.” Nature communications 8.1 (2017): 1-8. ↩︎ ↩︎
Selenium can be deposited by thermal evaporation at only 200°C. This temperature is within easy reach of solar thermal technologies, which means that in principle these processes could be run by direct use of solar energy. ↩︎
Hadar, Ido, et al. “Modern processing and insights on selenium solar cells: the world’s first photovoltaic device.” Advanced Energy Materials 9.16 (2019): 1802766. ↩︎
Ferhati, H., F. Djeffal, and D. Arar. “Above 14% efficiency earth-abundant selenium solar cells by introducing gold nanoparticles and Titanium sub-layer.” Optical Materials 86 (2018): 24-31. ↩︎
Zhu, Menghua, Guangda Niu, and Jiang Tang. “Elemental Se: fundamentals and its optoelectronic applications.” Journal of Materials Chemistry C 7.8 (2019): 2199-2206. ↩︎
More details in “George Cove’s solar energy device”, Dennis Bartels, 1997. ↩︎ ↩︎
Polozine, Alexandre, Susanna Sirotinskaya, and Lírio Schaeffer. “History of development of thermoelectric materials for electric power generation and criteria of their quality.” Materials Research 17 (2014): 1260-1267. ↩︎

Thermoelectric Stoves: Ditch the Solar Panels?

Tue, 26 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Illustration: [Diego Marmolejo](https://www.instagram.com/ddidak/).

If the 2,000 year old windmill is the predecessor of today’s wind turbines, the fireplace and the wood stove are the even older predecessors of today’s solar panels. Like solar panels, trees and other plants convert sunlight into a useful source of energy for humans. Throughout history, the burning of wood and other biomass provided households with thermal energy, which was used for cooking, heating, washing, and lighting.

Photosynthesis also underpinned all historical sources of mechanical power: it provided fuel for both human and animal power, as well as the building materials for water mills and windmills. Neither the old-fashioned windmill nor the old-fashioned wood stove produced electricity, but both can easily be adapted to do so. It suffices to connect an electric generator to a windmill, and to connect a thermoelectric generator to a wood stove.

Thermoelectric Generator

Thermoelectric generators (or “TEGS”) are very similar to “photoelectric” generators – which we now call “photovoltaic” generators or solar PV cells. A photovoltaic generator converts light directly into electricity, and a thermoelectric generator converts heat directly into electricity. ¹

A thermoelectric generator consists of a number of ingot-shaped semiconductor elements which are connected in series with metal strips and sandwiched between two electrically insulating but thermally conducting ceramic plates to form a very compact module. ² They are commercially available from manufacturers such as Hi-Z, Tellurex, Thermalforce and Thermomanic.

A thermoelectric module. Image: Gerardtv (CC BY-SA 3.0)

A thermoelectric module. Image used with permission, Applied Thermoelectric Solutions LLC, [How Thermoelectric Generators Work](https://thermoelectricsolutions.com/how-thermoelectric-generators-work/).

Stick a thermoelectric module to the surface of a wood stove, and it will produce electricity whenever the stove is used for cooking, space heating, or water heating. In the experiments and prototypes that are described in more detail below, the power output per module varies between 3 and 19 watts.

As with solar panels, modules can be connected together in parallel and series to obtain any voltage and power output that one needs – at least as long as there is stove surface left. As with solar panels, the electric current that is produced by the thermoelectric module(s) is regulated by a charge controller and stored into a battery, so that power is also available when the stove is not in use. A thermoelectric stove is usually combined with low voltage, direct current appliances, which avoids the conversion losses of using an inverter.

Thermoelectric stoves could be applied in many parts of the world. Most research is aimed at the global South, where close to 3,000 million people (40% of the global population) rely on burning biomass for cooking and domestic water heating. Some of these households also use the stove or fireplace for lighting (1,300 million people have no access to electricity) and for space heating during part of the year. However, there’s also research aimed at households in industrial societies, where biomass stoves and burners have increased in popularity, especially outside of cities.

100% Efficient

Ever since the thermoelectric effect was first described by Thomas Seebeck in 1821, thermoelectric generators have been infamous for their low efficiency in converting heat into electricity. ³⁴⁵⁶ Today, the electrical efficiency of thermoelectric modules is only around 5-6%, roughly three times lower than that of the most commonly used solar PV panels. ⁴

However, in combination with a stove, the electrical efficiency of a thermoelectric module doesn’t matter that much. If a module is only 5% efficient in converting heat into electricity, the other 95% comes out as heat again. If the stove is used for space heating, this heat cannot be considered an energy loss, because it still contributes to its original purpose. Total system efficiency (heat + electricity) is close to 100% – no energy is lost. With appropriate stove design, the heat from electricity conversion can also be re-used for cooking or domestic water heating.

More Reliable than Solar Panels

Thermoelectric modules share many of the benefits of solar panels: they are modular, they require little maintenance, they don’t have moving parts, they operate silently, and they have a long life expectancy. ⁷ However, thermoelectric modules also offer interesting advantages compared to solar PV panels, provided that there’s a regularly used (non-electric) heat source in the household.

Although thermoelectric modules are roughly three times less efficient than solar PV panels, thermoelectric stoves provide a more reliable electricity supply because their power production is less dependent on the weather, the seasons, and the time of the day. In jargon, thermoelectric stoves have a higher “net capacity factor” than solar PV panels.

Even if a stove is only used for cooking and hot water production, these daily household activities still guarantee a reliable power output, no matter the climate. Furthermore, the power production of a thermoelectric stove matches very well with the power demand of householders: the times when the stove is used, are commonly also the times when most electricity is used. Solar panels, on the other hand, produce little or no electricity when household demand peaks.

Image: A Soviet thermo-electric generator based on a kerosene lamp, powering a radio, 1959. Source: [The Museum of Retrotechnology](http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/thermoelectric/thermoelectric.htm).

Note that these advantages disappear when thermoelectric generators are powered by direct solar energy. Solar thermoelectric generators (or “STEGS”), in which thermoelectric modules are heated by concentrated sunlight, don’t compensate for the low efficiency of their modules due to higher reliability because they are just as dependent on the weather as solar PV panels are. ⁸⁹¹⁰

Less Energy Storage

Because of its higher reliability, there’s no need to oversize the power generation and storage capacity of a thermoelectric system to compensate for nights, dark seasons or bad weather days, as is the case with a solar PV installation. Battery capacity only needs to be large enough to store electricity for use in between two firings of the stove, and there’s no need to add extra modules to compensate for periods of low power production.

Solar panels and thermoelectric stoves can also be combined, resulting in a reliable off-grid system with little need for energy storage. Such a hybrid system combines well with a stove that is only used for space heating. The thermoelectric modules produce most of the power in winter, while the solar panels take over in summer.

Cheaper to Install, Easier to Recycle

A second advantage is that thermoelectric modules are easier to install than solar panels. There’s no need to build a structure on the roof and an electric link to the outside world, because the whole power plant is indoors. This also prevents theft of the power source, a significant problem with solar panels in some regions.

All these factors make that power from a thermoelectric stove can be cheaper and more sustainable compared to power from solar PV panels. Less energy, materials and money are needed to manufacture batteries, modules, and support structures.

In terms of sustainability, there’s another advantage: unlike solar PV panels, thermoelectric modules are relatively easy to recycle. Although silicon solar cells themselves are perfectly recyclable, they are encapsulated in a plastic layer (usually “EVA” or ethylene/vinyl acetate polymer), which is critical to the long-term performance of the modules. ¹¹ Removing this layer without destroying the silicon cells is technically possible, but so complex that it makes recycling unattractive from both a financial and energetic viewpoint. ¹²¹³ On the other hand, thermoelectric modules do not contain any plastic at all. ¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶

Cooling the Modules

The electrical efficiency of a thermoelectric generator doesn’t only depend on the module itself. It’s also, in large part, influenced by the temperature difference between the cold and the hot side of the module. A thermoelectric module operating at half the temperature difference will only generate one quarter of the power. Consequently, improving the thermal management of a thermoelectric generator is a major focus in the design of thermoelectric stoves, as it allows to produce more power with less modules.

On the one hand, this involves locating the hottest spot(s) on a stove and fixing the modules there – provided that they can take the heat. Most stoves have surface temperatures from 100 to 300 degrees Celsius, while the hot side of bismuth telluride modules (the most affordable and efficient ones) withstands continuous temperatures of 150 to 350 degrees, depending on the model.

On the other hand, thermal management comes down to lowering the temperature of the cold side as much as possible, which can be done in four ways: air-cooled and water-cooled forced convection, which involves electric fans and pumps, and air-cooled and water-cooled natural convection, which involves the use of passive heat sinks that do not have a parasitic load on the system.

Active cooling usually has higher efficiency, even when the extra use of a fan or a pump is taken into account. However, passive systems are cheaper, operate silently, and are more reliable than active systems. In particular, the breakdown of a fan can be problematic, as it can lead to module failure due to overheating. ¹⁷

Thermoelectric Stoves with Heat Sinks

The first thermoelectric biomass stoves were built in the early 2000s, although the Soviets pioneered a similar concept in the 1950s with mostly electric radios powered by kerosene lamps. ⁶ In 2004, a team of Lebanese researchers retrofitted a typical cast-iron wood stove from local rural areas with a single 56 x 56 mm thermoelectric module they had made themselves. ¹⁸ The stove, which is used for cooking and baking as well as for space and water heating, is rather small (52 x 44 x 29 cm) and weighs 40 kg.

Image: The cast-iron stove used in the experiments. [^18]

The researchers screwed a 1 cm thick smooth aluminium plate to the hottest spot of the stove surface, fixed the module there, and attached a very large (180 x 136 x 125 mm) aluminium finned heat sink to its cold side. At a burning rate of 2.5 kg soft pine wood per hour, their experiments showed an average power output of 4.2 watts. Operating the wood stove for 10 hours per day (excluding the warm-up phase) thus supplies a rural Lebanese household with 42 watt-hours of electricity, enough to cover basic needs.

Image: TEG installation details and location on stove. [^18]

More modules and heat sinks can be added to increase power output, but of course the stove surface is limited, and as more modules are added they will be located in areas with a lower surface temperature, decreasing their efficiency. Another way to increase power production is to use an even larger heat sink, and/or a more expensive heat sink made from materials with higher thermal conductivity.

Thermoelectric Stoves with Fans

Most thermoelectric stoves that have been built to date use electric fans to cool the module, in combination with a much smaller heat sink. Although the fan can break and is a parasitic load on the system, it can simultaneously increase the efficiency of the stove by blowing hot air into the combustion chamber – slashing firewood consumption and air pollution roughly by half. Furthermore, fan-powered stoves avoid the building of a chimney and can rely on a horizontal exhaust pipe instead. ¹⁹ Consequently, self-powered, fan-cooled stoves make it possible to reduce firewood consumption and indoor air pollution in rural regions of the global South where people neither have access to electricity, nor the means to make a chimney through the roof.

A study of a forced-draft thermoelectric cookstove with one module showed a 4.5 watt power output, of which 1 watt is required to operate the fan. ²⁰ The net power production (3.5 watts) is lower compared to that of the stove with only a heat sink (4.2 watts), but the fan-cooled stove uses only half as much firewood: it generates 3.5 watts net electricity at a burning rate of 1 kg of firewood per hour, while the passively cooled stove requires 2.5 kg of firewood to produce 4.2 watts.

Image: TEG-powered forced draft cooking stove. [^20]

An 80-days field test of a similar portable thermoelectric cookstove design in Malawi showed that the technology was highly valued by the users, with the stoves producing more electricity than was needed. Over the entire period, power production amounted to between 250 and 700 watt-hours of electricity, while electricity use was between 100 and 250 watt-hours. ²¹

Some fan-cooled thermoelectric cooking stoves are commercially available, often designed with backpackers in mind. Examples are the stoves from BioLite, Termomanic and Termefor, which advertise power outputs between 3 and 10 watts, depending on the design and the number of modules. ¹⁷

Thermoelectric Stoves with Water Tanks

The most efficient thermoelectric stoves are those in which the cold side of the module(s) is cooled by direct contact with a water reservoir. Water has lower thermal resistance than air, and thus cools more effectively. Furthermore, its temperature cannot surpass 100 degrees Celsius, which makes module failure due to overheating less likely.

Image: the principle of thermoelectric stove with passive water cooling. [^17]

When thermoelectric modules are water-cooled, the waste heat from their electricity conversion does not contribute to space heating, but to domestic water heating. Water-cooled thermoelectric stoves can be active (using a pump) or passive (no moving parts). ¹⁷

Most thermoelectric stoves with passive water cooling are small and only used for heating relatively small amounts of water. In fact, rather than the stove, it is most often a cooking pot that is equipped with thermoelectric modules. For example, the PowerPot is a commercially available backpacking type cooking pot with a thermoelectric module attached to the base, which can be directly placed on the top of a stove and advertises a power generation of 5-10 watts.

Image: multifunctional wood stove with passive water cooling. [^22]

A much larger and more versatile thermoelectric stove with passive water cooling was designed by French researchers, based on a large, multifunctional mud wood stove design from Morocco. ¹⁹²²²³²⁴²⁵ They installed eight thermoelectric modules at the bottom of a built-in 30L water storage tank, which not only serves as the heat sink for the cold side of the generator, but also as the domestic hot water supply for the household. Furthermore, the stove is equipped with a self-powered electric fan and has a double combustion chamber to increase combustion efficiency.

Tests of a prototype generated 28 watts of power using two modules, while burning 1.5 kg of wood for cooking and/or heating. The fan used 15W, meaning that 13W of power remains for other uses. The stove also provided 60 litres of hot water per hour. Depending on the duration of two cooking sessions, between 35 and 55 watt-hour electricity was stored in a battery in a day. Note that here the researchers take into account the losses of the charge controller, the 6V battery, and the fan.

Thermoelectric Stoves with Pumps

Passive water cooling has a downside. As the temperature of the water in the tank increases, the difference between the cold and the hot side of the module will decrease, and so will the electrical efficiency. There either needs to be sufficient time between two firings of a stove to let the water cool down again, or the warm water should regularly be used and replaced by cold water. A pump makes this task more convenient.

Image: Prototype of a thermoelectric stove with water-cooled modules. [^26]

A 2015 prototype, in which a wood stove used for cooking and space and water heating was equipped with 21 thermoelectric modules cooled by a pumped water system, showed a power production from 25W (burning 1 kg of pine wood per hour) over 70W (4 kg wood/hour) to 166W (9 kg wood/hour). ²⁶ The power output per module is as high as 7.9 watts, almost double the power output per module of the stove with natural air cooling. The pump uses 5W and the stove also has a fan to increase combustion efficiency, which consumes 1W. ²⁷²⁸

Thermoelectric Gas Boilers?

Thermoelectric generators with forced water cooling better fit the energy infrastructure in industrial societies, especially in households with central heating systems. More modules could be added, resulting in a power production that matches a relatively high energy lifestyle. However, there’s some caveats. First, central heating systems are only used for space and water heating, not for cooking, which makes their power production less reliable throughout the year. Second, only some central heating systems operate on biomass or wood pellet burners, while many more run on gas, oil or electricity.

Prototype of a thermoelectric wood-pellet burner. [^30]

Obviously, when the heat source is electric, it makes no sense to stick a thermoelectric module to it. A thermoelectric system is incompatible with the vision of a high-tech sustainable building where heating is done with an electric heat pump, cooking happens on an electric cooking stove, and hot water is produced by an electric boiler.

However, when the energy source is gas or oil, a thermoelectric boiler is as much of a low carbon solution as a grid-connected solar PV system on the roof. ²⁹ A thermoelectric heating system doesn’t make a household independent of fossil fuels, but neither does a grid-connected solar PV installation. It relies on the (largely fossil fuel powered) power grid to solve energy shortages and excesses, and it usually counts on a fossil fuel powered central heating system for space and water heating.

Image: A 1 kW thermoelectric generator with forced-water cooling for low temperature geothermal resources. [^31]

A thermoelectric heating system that runs on fossil fuels also compares favourably to a large cogeneration power plant, which captures the waste heat of its electricity production and distributes it to individual households for space and water heating. In a thermoelectric heating system, heat and power are produced and consumed on-site. Unlike a central cogeneration power plant, there’s no need for an infrastructure to distribute heat and electricity. This saves resources and avoids energy losses during transportation, which amount to between 10 and 20% for heat distribution and between 3 and 10% (or much more in some regions) for power distribution.

A cogeneration power plant is more energy efficient (25-40%) in turning heat into electricity, meaning that in comparison a thermoelectric heating system supplies a larger share of heat and a smaller share of electricity. This is far from problematic, though, because even in Europe 80% of average household energy use goes to space and water heating.

In both cases, the workings can be reversed. If one runs an electric current through a thermoelectric module, it can act as a heater or a cooler. If one runs an electric current through a photovoltaic device, it will produce light – that’s the principle of a LED. ↩︎
Rowe, David Michael, ed. CRC handbook of thermoelectrics. CRC press, 2018. ↩︎
Thermoelectric generators, The Museum of Retrotechnology, accessed May 2020. http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/thermoelectric/thermoelectric.htm ↩︎
Polozine, Alexandre, Susanna Sirotinskaya, and Lírio Schaeffer. “History of development of thermoelectric materials for electric power generation and criteria of their quality.” Materials Research 17.5 (2014): 1260-1267. ↩︎ ↩︎
Goupil, Christophe, ed. Continuum theory and modeling of thermoelectric elements. John Wiley & Sons, 2015. ↩︎
Joffe, Abram F. “The revival of thermoelectricity.” Scientific American 199.5 (1958): 31-37. ↩︎ ↩︎
The Stirling engine, another predecessor of the solar PV panel that converts heat into electricity, lacks many of these advantages. ↩︎
Kraemer, Daniel, et al. “Concentrating solar thermoelectric generators with a peak efficiency of 7.4%.” Nature Energy 1.11 (2016): 1-8. ↩︎
Amatya, R., and R. J. Ram. “Solar thermoelectric generator for micropower applications.” Journal of electronic materials 39.9 (2010): 1735-1740. ↩︎
Gayathri, Ms D. Binu Ms R., Mr Vijay Anand Ms R. Lavanya, and Ms R. Kanmani. “Thermoelectric Power Generation Using Solar Energy.” International Journal for Scientific Research & Development, Vol. 5, Issue 03, 2017. ↩︎
Jiang, Shan, et al. “Encapsulation of PV modules using ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer as the encapsulant.” Macromolecular Reaction Engineering 9.5 (2015): 522-529. ↩︎
Xu, Yan, et al. “Global status of recycling waste solar panels: A review.” Waste Management 75 (2018): 450-458. ↩︎
Sica, Daniela, et al. “Management of end-of-life photovoltaic panels as a step towards a circular economy.” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82 (2018): 2934-2945. ↩︎
Bahrami, Amin, Gabi Schierning, and Kornelius Nielsch. “Waste Recycling in Thermoelectric Materials.” Advanced Energy Materials (2020). ↩︎
Balva, Maxime, et al. “Dismantling and chemical characterization of spent Peltier thermoelectric devices for antimony, bismuth and tellurium recovery.” Environmental technology 38.7 (2017): 791-797. ↩︎ ↩︎
In terms of weight, a thermoelectric module of 5 grams consists of alumina for the ceramic plates (44%); copper for the electric contacts (28%); tellurium (10%), bismuth (6%) and antimony (2%) for the thermoelectric legs; and small amounts of tin (for soldering), selenium (for “doping” the bismuth telluride) and silicone paste (the only polymer in the module, used for gluing everything together). In thermoelectric modules, the concentration of the scarce elements antimony, tellurium and bismuth is much higher compared to their traditional resources, which makes recycling attractive. ¹⁵ ↩︎
Gao, H. B., et al. “Development of stove-powered thermoelectric generators: A review.” Applied Thermal Engineering 96 (2016): 297-310. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Nuwayhid, Rida Y., Alan Shihadeh, and Nesreen Ghaddar. “Development and testing of a domestic woodstove thermoelectric generator with natural convection cooling.” Energy conversion and management 46.9-10 (2005): 1631-1643. ↩︎
Champier, Daniel, et al. “Study of a TE (thermoelectric) generator incorporated in a multifunction wood stove.” Energy 36.3 (2011): 1518-1526. ↩︎ ↩︎
Raman, Perumal, Narasimhan K. Ram, and Ruchi Gupta. “Development, design and performance analysis of a forced draft clean combustion cookstove powered by a thermo electric generator with multi-utility options.” Energy 69 (2014): 813-825. ↩︎
O’Shaughnessy, S. M., et al. “Field trial testing of an electricity-producing portable biomass cooking stove in rural Malawi.” Energy for Sustainable development 20 (2014): 1-10. ↩︎
Champier, Daniel, et al. “Thermoelectric power generation from biomass cook stoves.” Energy 35.2 (2010): 935-942. ↩︎
Champier, Daniel, et al. “Prototype combined heater/thermoelectric power generator for remote applications.” Journal of electronic materials 42.7 (2013): 1888-1899. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02014177/document ↩︎
Champier, Daniel. “Thermoelectric generators: A review of applications.” Energy Conversion and Management 140 (2017): 167-181. ↩︎
Favarel, Camille, et al. “Thermoelectricity-A Promising Complementarity with Efficient Stoves in Off-grid-areas.” Journal of Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems 3.3 (2015): 256-268. ↩︎
Goudarzi, A. M., et al. “Integration of thermoelectric generators and wood stove to produce heat, hot water, and electrical power.” Journal of electronic materials 42.7 (2013): 2127-2133. ↩︎
The researchers also suggest a way to eliminate the pump: a water tank can be placed at a height of 1 m to provide the water, gravity will work as a pump to flow water into the cooling system, and the hot water produced by the cooling system can be stored in an insulated tank. ↩︎
Another prototype generated an average output of 27W with just two modules, more than enough to power the pump (8W). Net power production is 9.5 watts per module. Montecucco, Andrea, Jonathan Siviter, and Andrew R. Knox. “A combined heat and power system for solid-fuel stoves using thermoelectric generators.” Energy Procedia 75 (2015): 597-602. ↩︎
In fact, the earliest experiments with thermoelectric heating systems date from the late 1990s and were aimed at the development of self-powered gas boilers. Central heating systems typically consume 250-400W of power for operating their electrical components: fans, blowers, pumps and control panels. By adding thermoelectric modules, the system maintains its ability to heat a home in the event of a prolonged electric outage. In combination with grid-connected solar PV panels, this only works while the sun shines. Allen, D. T., and W. Ch Mallon. “Further development of” self-powered boilers"." Eighteenth International Conference on Thermoelectrics. Proceedings, ICT'99 (Cat. No. 99TH8407). IEEE, 1999. Allen, Daniel T., and Jerzy Wonsowski. “Thermoelectric self-powered hydronic heating demonstration.” XVI ICT'97. Proceedings ICT'97. 16th International Conference on Thermoelectrics (Cat. No. 97TH8291). IEEE, 1997. ↩︎