Any way to use a thermoelectric generator to harness the heat

>>1074111
TEGs are very inefficient at generating electricity from heat, and you'll need a significant temperature difference to get anything useful out of them. i red somewhere that even having a hot air engine with a dynamo is still more efficient than a TEG,

>>1074122
This, maybe you could use the heat to heat water or something

>>1074111
>>1074122
>>1074132
TEGs are fine when you have a lot of them together. They are a good solid state solution to waste heat electric generation. They are easy to install and have little maintenance. Their only draw backs are initial expense and low output per square foot.

Fluid-based PV panel cooling is also a good option, but requires a lot of space just for the heat exchangers in both removing the heat from the PV panels and placing it into whatever device you want to use to make electric with. This type of cooling is better used for heating potable water for domestic use in houses than for making electric in a van (if pic is related.) Faults and failures in the system become very messing and troublesome. In cold areas, you must have 2 fluid circuits if heating domestic-use water. One is antifreeze and the other is the domestic-use water. For non-domestic-water use you only need the antifreeze circuit. The best electrical generation would be to use the fluid system with a Stirling Engine of rather large diameter. Remember that all parts of the system except the heat exchangers must be well insulated and have active flower using a pump (the pump will eat up more electric efficiency). Thermosiphon flow can't be done efficiently when the heating is at the top of the circuit.

Costs for the fluid-based system will ultimately be higher than the TEG system for the amount of watts you will be able to attain. Costs also include maintenance and time spent designing, maintaining, and building a non-standard fluid system.

Using only air instead of fluid would be a waste of time and effort.

All cooling methods for PV panels will increase the efficiency of the panels and extend their life.

>>1074111
Not really. You need 400+ degrees Fahrenheit for TEGS to do anything.

>>1074208

>All cooling methods for PV panels will increase the efficiency of the panels and extend their life.

If you have enough surface area you're better off just having more panels. The cost and maintenance of cooling are just not worth it in the end.

>>1074111
TEGs are really just semiconductor junctions, which is exactly what non-amorphous photo-voltaic cells already are.
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You can apply almost any kind of energy (light, sound, heat) to a PN junction (any kind of diode, transistor or LED) and it will convert at least some of that energy into electricity... The only type of energy that it can't convert is nuclear radiation, as it damages the PN junction directly.

The problem with using a PN junction to generate useful electricity directly from heat is that one side of the PN junction needs to be pretty hot (hundreds of degrees) and the other side needs to be pretty cold (near or below freezing). The greater the heat difference, the more power is generated. Probem is there's not a lot of circumstances where you have two extreme temperatures available like that.