Solid State Peltier Thermoelectric Cooler

Hi

I was wandering if any one has had any experience of using a Solid State Peltier Thermoelectric Cooler for cooling arrays of Luxeon 5W stars, in principal you would have a complete solid state system creating light and removing unwanted heat. Does anyone know how efficient these devices are?

Very inefficient.

At a certian power level, peltiers can either maintian a constant dT with moving zero heat, or a constant zero dT moving some maximum amount of heat.

A peltier that I have can maintian a maximum dT of about 60C when the hot side is at about 70C - this is when it's moving no heat from the cold side to the hot side. It takes 35W of power to achieve this. It can also move 35W of heat from the cold side to the hot side maintaining 0C temperature differential between the two sides.

Given the TEC that I have, you'd have to have at least 7 Luxeon Vs to break the 50% efficiency mark - and at that point, you're not keeping them any cooler than if you didn't have the TEC in the first place.

So basically, it's not worth it - you don't gain any additional cooling, or real performance improvement and it costs you from twice to 10x the power.

Thanks for the information I thought it would be too good to be true.