Development of Solar a-Si PV/Thermal(PVT) System for Tropical Region
Abstract
The tropical countries like Singapore possess good solar energy resource that can yield more than 1460kWh m-2 per year. However, the PV technologies available in the current PV market can just convert less than 20% of the available solar energy to electricity due to limited band gap of PV cells, system losses and the high ambient temperature in the tropic region. The solar energy that can not be captured by PV cells is mostly changed to heat and dissipate to the air. The integration of photovoltaic (PV) modules with solar thermal panel helps to harvest more solar energy to produce electricity and hot water for tropical domestic use.