Abstract
A model of three PV/T collectors of 3.9 m2 area was developed in TRNSYS for analysing its cooling potential in Athens, Greece; Madrid, Spain; Milan, Italy; Bucharest, Romania; Frankfurt, Germany; Copenhagen, Denmark and Oslo, Norway between 1st of May and 30th of September. An in-depth analysis over the model was conducted for Copenhagen, Denmark where supply temperature, collector slope, and flow rate were varied. For the other six European cities subject to different climates, the only parameter varied was the supply temperature while the optimum slope for electricity production was selected for the PV/Ts. A coverage ratio was determined, representing the amount of cooling demand of an office room covered by the cooling energy produced by the PV/Ts. With respect to Europe, a higher cooling potential was found for northern climates. For a representative supply temperature of 21oC, a specific cooling power ranging from 35 to 70 W/m2 was determined. Finally, the same trend was visible for the coverage ratio, ranging from 55% to 120%. The results show that this cooling technology has a potential to be further used, when coupled to appropriate room cooling systems, such as water-based high temperature cooling systems.
Highlights
During the night, the sky can reach temperatures below 0oC [1]
Water circulated through a photovoltaic/thermal panel can be cooled by releasing heat through the radiative heat exchange between the sky and the panel’s surface [2]
Its dependency on the climate makes this technology similar to other renewable energy production methods, it was chosen as the utilization factor of PV/Ts can be increased
Summary
Since the radiative heat exchange is the main driver, it has the highest influence over the cooling output of the PV/Ts. As literature suggests, the main actor is the sky temperature followed by air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and cloud coverage [3,4,5,6]. The main actor is the sky temperature followed by air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and cloud coverage [3,4,5,6] These parameters can influence the cooling output through convection, which can increase it if the air temperature is lower than the surface temperature of the PV/T or decrease it otherwise [3,4,5,6,7]. This study aims at making a preliminary analysis on the cooling potential of photovoltaic/thermal panels for European cities with the use of the TRNSYS17 software
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