High-accuracy thermoelectrical module model for energy-harvesting systems

This study proposes a new SPICE model for thermoelectrical modules (TEMs) that takes into account the internal parameters variation with temperature. Prior work considers constant values for the three factors that determine the figure of merit: Z = ((σS²)/k), that is the electrical conductivity, the Seebeck coefficient and the thermal conductivity. This leads to large errors in simulation because the parameters vary strongly with temperature. The new model also employs the parasitic elements that appear in a TEM and not discussed in prior works. The proposed model uses experimental data from several TEMs of different manufacturers. The thermoelectrical model of the entire system will be afterwards validated through experiment. A thermoelectric energy-harvesting system is proposed and simulated based on the improved TEMs model. The results show that our model can be used for more accurate simulations when designing TEM-based applications.