Comparative analysis of electrical performance parameters under combined water cooling technique of photovoltaic module: An experimental investigation

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe electrical parameters of photovoltaic (PV) cell are adversely affected by the increase of solar cell temperature during absorption of solar radiation. The main objective of this paper is to reduce the cell temperature to increase its electrical output and efficiency. In this paper, an attempt is made to evaluate the electrical performance of a PV module using water cooling system. The two type of water cooling techniques (PV module with water cooling and PV module without water cooling) and four different flow rates are considered for performance comparison. The experimental results show that the combined cooling is more efficient than front cooling and back cooling which reduces the temperature of the PV module significantly. The experimental results show that the average output power of the PV module increased up to 18.32% in winter season and 20.9% in summer seasons, respectively, and the average efficiency increased up to 46.4% and 52.70% in winter and summer seasons, respectively, using combined (front and back) surface cooling techniques. The best performance of the PV is found by using 1.5 liters per minute (LPM) out of four different water flow rates (i.e. 1 LPM, 2 LPM, and 2.5 LPM).