Experimental study on efficiency enhancement of PV systems with combined effect of cooling and maximum power point tracking

Abstract

Efficiency of PV systems that is used in commercial market is very low. This is due to the facts that losses are occurred during absorption of heat energy from sun then its conversion to electrical energy and then connecting the system to the grid or load. Various losses include pre-module losses, module losses, system losses and operation & maintenance losses. Efficiency of solar panel is affected by its surface temperature. This is one of the module losses. With increase in temperature, efficiency of panel will get reduced. The module temperature is getting affected by the atmospheric temperature, wind speed and solar irradiance. In this paper the temperature of the panel is reduced by passing water through the backside of panel and heat from the panel is transferred to this water. Copper tube is attached to the backside of the panel for passing of the water. Water is passed through the tube by natural flow. It is obtained by themosiphon effect. As a result hot water is obtained as one of the output of this system. Temperature of the panel has been reduced and efficiency of the panel is also increased. Efficiency is also reduced during connecting the panel to the load. Such losses can be reduced with the help of Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT). MPPT system can be employed using various algorithms. Here Incremental conductance method is used for MPPT system. By this method system losses can be reduced. Efficiency of the system is improved to 11% from 8.9 %.