Thermoelectric Solar versus Photovoltaic Electrical Power Generation

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Photovoltaic Solar Collectors convert light from the Sun and other light sources directly to electricity. Decades of research has found the total amount of electrical power produced is 15 Watts per Square foot of electrical power. The square foot collector area needed for an average home requires in many cases the entire home roof and perhaps the back yard as well as the dog house. The United States Department of Energy in Colorado’s budget is 350 million dollars annually. They recently increased the electrical power produced in Photovoltaic Solar Collectors to a Whopping 20 Watts per square foot of electrical power…. Hmmm

Thermoelectric Solar Collectors today can produce as much as 200-300 Watts of Electrical Power Per Square foot. The total square feet of collector area could be 25 square feet for the average size home. There could be enough power to feed the grid as a 5’X 5’ size Solar Collector could produce 7,500 Watts of Electrical Power or be stored on site using Batteries or Thermal storage to be used at night time. Building Thermoelectric Solar Collectors has not been practical in the past as the Thermocouple/ Thermopiles were hand built requiring many man power-hours to build by hand. Today we have 3D metal sintering printing processes that can mass produce thousands of square feet of Seebeck/Thermopile connections in a very short time period. The thermocouple elements need not be Thermoelectric-type elements of Bismuth Tellurium but basic thermocouple elements such as Copper and Constantan or similar materials. The base metal elements produce less power than Bismuth Tellurium Seebeck connections, but the large number of connections that can be produced using 3D printing makes up for the lower power produced. The base metal thermocouple power out for Solar applications is much smaller than when these thermocouples are used in hot water tanks or furnaces at much higher temperatures. They are cost effective over semiconductors and the metals are cheap and relatively nontoxic. I have included pictures of a dissected standard Thermocouple found in many hot water tanks in the home. You can see that there are not many Seebeck connections inside but this type of Thermocouple produces 750 Mv of power. Imagine what 3D printing for a Solar collector can produce in Square Feet. The enclosed pictures are simulated benchtop Solar tests. The National Bureau of Standards Circular 561 has tables of different temperatures and power produced using different types of thermocouple elements.