Effect of natural convection and thermal storage system on the electrical and thermal performance of a hybrid PV-T/PCM systems

Abstract

Waste heat management is one of the prominent method of increasing the electrical performance of photo-voltaic (PV) panels by decreasing its operating temperature. In this paper, investigation on integrating natural convection phenomena with phase change materials (PCM) beneath the PV panel for heat extraction from the panel has been reported. The PV temperature is regulated by PCM and increase its efficiency. A numerical model was developed for this PV-T/PCM system and validated with the experimental data. A comparative numerical study has been performed to analyze the electrical and thermal characteristics of PV, PV/PCM and air integrated PV-T/PCM system with an incident solar radiation of 800 W/m2. A drop of 25% and 35% has been observed in PV cell temperature for PV/PCM system and air PV-T/PCM respectively with reference to base PV system. As a result of this temperature drop the electrical efficiency of PV cell has been augmented by 14.12% and 19.75% for PV/PCM system and air PV-T/PCM respectively.