Building-integrated photovoltaic/thermal (BIPV/T) system has been considered as an attractive technology
for building integration. The main part of a BIPV/T system is PV/T collector. In order to solve
the non-uniform cooling of solar PV cells and control the operating temperature of solar PV cells conveniently,
a heat pipe photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) hybrid system (collector) has been proposed and
described by selecting a wick heat pipe to absorb isothermally the excessive heat from solar PV cells.
A theoretical model in terms of heat transfer process analysis in PV module panel and introducing the
effectiveness–number of transfer unit (ε–NTU) method in heat exchanger design was developed to predict
the overall thermal–electrical conversion performances of the heat pipe PV/T system. A detailed
parametric investigation by varying relevant parameters, i.e., inlet water temperature, water mass flow
rate, packing factor of solar cell and heat loss coefficient has been carried out on the basis of the first
and second laws of thermodynamics. Results show that the overall thermal, electrical and exergy efficiencies
of the heat pipe PV/T hybrid system corresponding to 63.65%, 8.45% and 10.26%, respectively
can be achieved under the operating conditions presented in this paper. The varying range of operating
temperature for solar cell on the absorber plate is less than 2.5 ◦C. The heat pipe PV/T hybrid system is
viable and exhibits the potential and competitiveness over the other conventional BIPV/T systems.