The stability of output performance plays a very important role in the thermoelectric generation (TEG) system since the fluctuation problem of heat source widely exists in the industry which releases the waste heat, and the fluctuating process will cause the instability and low efficiency of the TEG system. In this article, a novel TEG system with thermal switch was proposed to address this serious problem. In order to obtain the detailed characteristics of the TEG system with thermal switch, experimental and dynamic modeling methods were employed. The experimental and modeling results show that the thermal switch can efficiently reduce the temperature fluctuation and increase the output power and efficiency of the TEG system; in addition, there is an optimal turning on/off temperature to maximally increase the output power and electricity efficiency of the TEG system. The comparison between the numerical data and the experimental results has further demonstrated the proposed model. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.