An Approach Towards Performance Evaluation of Solar Photovoltaic Module through Energy and Exergy Analysis

Abstract

The pressure on the agriculture sector has significantly grown due to the fast rising trend of global population growth, which is predicted to reach more than 9 billion by 2050. In the meantime, the issues related with emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) and the decreasing supply of fossil resources are eliminating traditional farming practices. The agriculture sector is looking to feed the increasing population in more sustainable way with the access of technology based on renewable energy. Solar energy is one of the most accessible types of renewable energy when applied to farm uses. Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology has been used to generate the necessary energy to operate number of equipment used in agricultural throughout the years, including drying of crop, irrigation through pumping, greenhouse and dairy farming. In present work, an attempt has been made to evaluate the performance of solar photovoltaic system. The parameters such as ambient temperature, panel temperature, open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current, energy and exergy efficiencies were determined during experiment. Energy and exergy efficiencies during the day was ranged from 10.11–13.35% and 10-13.29%, respectively. It has been found that the exergy efficiency of PV modules was significantly influenced by the temperature, and that the exergy efficiency may be increased by removing heat from the PV module surface.