Exergetic Analysis of Glazed Photovoltaic Thermal (Single-Channel) Module Using Whale Optimization Algorithm and Genetic Algorithm

Abstract

Photovoltaic thermal (PV-T) system gains greater attention in the last four decades because of its quality to produce both electrical and thermal energy simultaneously and unites the electrical and thermal components in a single unit over the conventional photovoltaic system and solar thermal system which are capable of producing electricity and thermal energy, respectively. There are various parameters which affects the performance of the PV-T system such as dimensions of the channel (duct), depth of the tedlar, thickness of insulation layer, solar cell fabrication technology, velocity of fluid flowing through the channel, temperature of the fluid at the inlet and outlet of the channel ,and cell temperature but in this paper, only four of the above parameters have been considered for optimization study. But in the proposed work, only four parameters such as air channel length (LM), depth of the air duct (d), fluid velocity through the duct (VF), and temperature of the air at the inlet of duct (Tin) have been considered for optimization using two dissimilar optimization algorithms such as whale optimization algorithm (WOA) and genetic algorithm (GA). The outcomes show that an improvement around 31.147% in exergy efficiency and 41.29% in thermal efficiency of glazed PV-T (single-channel) module is observed using WOA technique when compared with GA. Furthermore, WOA is better in contrast to GA because of faster rate of convergence in identifying the parameters.