Hybrid Solar System / Brunel University

A team of scientists from Brunel University London, UK has come up with a solar panel/heat pipe hybrid system, which basically turns the whole roof into a solar power generator. This makes the panels a lot more efficient, since this system is able to harvest more solar energy than just solar panels alone.

This system is made up of flat heat pipes and PV cells, which can heat water and generate electricity. The pipes measure 4mm x 400mm and are used to heat water to be used by the household, while at the same time transferring heat away from the solar cells. In the tests by the creators, they found that this hybrid system was able to cool the PV cells by 15 percent more compared to a traditional PV array installation — via Jetson Green