Abstract
The thermal coefficient of a solar photovoltaic (PV) panel is a value that is provided with its specification sheet and tells us precisely the drop in panel performance with rising temperature. In desert climates, the PV panel temperatures are known to reach above 70 degrees centigrade. Exploring effective methods of increasing energy transfer efficiency is the issue that attracts researchers nowadays, which also contributes to reducing the cost of using solar photovoltaic (PV) systems with storage batteries. Temperature handling of solar PV modules is one of the techniques that improve the performance of such systems by cooling the bottom surface of the PV panels. This study initially reviews the effective methods of cooling the solar modules to select a proper, cost-effective, and easy to implement one. An active fan-based cooling method is considered in this research to make ventilation underneath the solar module. A portion of the output power at a prespecified high level of battery state-of-charge (SOC) is used to feed the fans. The developed comparator circuit is used to control the power ON/OFF of the fans. A Matlab-based simulation is employed to demonstrate the power rate improvements and that consumed by the fans. The results of simulations show that the presented approach can achieve significant improvements in the efficiency of PV systems that have storage batteries. The proposed method is demonstrated and evaluated for a 1.62 kW PV system. It is found from a simultaneous practical experiment on two identical PV panels of 180 W over a full day that the energy with the cooling system was 823.4 Wh, while that without cooling was 676 Wh. The adopted approach can play a role in enhancing energy sustainability.
Highlights
Solar PV is a great technology that has grown leaps and bounds over the last two decades [1, 2], but its efficiency remains around 20 percent even in premium panels [3, 4]
Only 20 percent of the energy intercepted by the solar panel is converted into electricity, the rest of the 80 percent is lost
This may not be important for people who have large roof areas for installing solar panels, but for people with limited roof space like in an urban setting that 80 percent lost energy means a lot more
Summary
Solar PV is a great technology that has grown leaps and bounds over the last two decades [1, 2], but its efficiency remains around 20 percent even in premium panels [3, 4]. It has been claimed that hybrid panels can have efficiency as high as 85 and can generate four times the energy produced from the same surface area for only a 25 % increase in cost [14]. This technique is a passive method but requires pipes and is costly Studies such as [26, 27] proved that using the PVT method, which produces extra energy, is the most feasible solution to cool solar PV panels. This advantage is an important and efficient feature but it is still expensive to implement. This can be achieved by targeting simple and cost-effective methods
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