Application of phase change materials for cooling of solar photovoltaic panels: A review

Abstract

The rapidly growing use of photovoltaic systems depicts its importance in the field of power generation in the near future. Photovoltaic panel absorbs 80% of the incident solar radiation and converts 20% of this absorbed energy into electrical energy depends upon the efficiency of photovoltaic panel, remaining absorbed energy get converted into heat causes surface temperature rise of PV panel. As the temperature of solar panel increases its electrical performance deteriorates. For every degree rise in PV surface temperature efficiency decreases from 0.4 to 0.65%. So, cooling of photovoltaic pane is very essential to have better energy conversion efficiency. Many researchers have investigated the performance of PV panel integrated with phase change materials (PCMs) based cooling technique. Effect of physical properties of PCM, ambient conditions and design of PCM encapsulation have analysed numerically and experimentally. Thermal conductivity of phase change material is very low varies from 0.16 to 0.25 W/mK, which can be enhanced by mixing nanoparticles and metallic foam into these materials. Review paper may help in the selection of PCM material for different environmental conditions. From the literature review it can be observed that with the use of appropriate PCM performance of PV panel and photovoltaic thermal system can be improved. PCM reduces the temperature of the PV surface and increase the energy conversion efficiency of the system.