Model development and performance evaluation of thermoelectric and radiative cooling module to achieve all-day power generation

To date, there still exist 1.3 billion people worldwide lacking reliable access to electricity. Radiative cooling driving thermoelectric generator can achieve all-day reliable power generation without any energy input. But the existing devices achieve extremely low power generation. In this work, a novel radiative cooling driving thermoelectric generator is developed and it can achieve significantly greater power generation, improving by 24% in inland areas and 71% in coastal areas (compared with the existing modules). Additionally, atmospheric humidity and solar absorption have the adverse impact on power generation, while ambient temperature is the opposite. And wind speed plays a leading role on the power generation of the module. As wind speed increases to 10 m/s, the power generation of the developed module is 5 times that of the existing modules. In the following operation modeling, the developed module achieves a maximum power generation of 0.92 W/m2, 84% higher than that of the existing report. Lastly, the power generation potential of the module is estimated and the Carnot-limited efficiency with radiative cooling can theoretically be improved from 15% to 23.1%. Our developed radiative cooling driving thermoelectric generator significantly improves the all-day power generation performance and has a great application potential in off-grid areas. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.