Investigation on different cooling strategies for photovoltaic thermal Systems: An experimental study

Abstract

Since the convection in air photovoltaic/thermal systems (PV/Ts) is weak, this study analyzes different cooling strategies experimentally to improve the thermal/electrical efficiency of PV/Ts. Hence, a PV/T was fabricated and tested outdoors, considering three cooling strategies: unbaffled, solid baffled, and perforated baffled PV/Ts at two flow rates of 0.092 kg/s and 0.17 kg/s. Perforated baffles are a robust, novel method that improves convection, reduces PV temperature, and enhances efficiency. Furthermore, the lower the PV temperature, the higher the electrical efficiency. The experimental data reveal that the peak PV temperature in the perforated baffled scenario falls by nearly 15.6 % and 17.5 % compared to that in the unbaffled scenario at the flow rates of 0.092 kg/s and 0.17 kg/s, respectively. However, the outlet temperature increases in the baffled scenarios compared to the unbaffled one due to improvement in the convection mechanism. Using the solid and perforated baffles increases the peak outlet temperature by nearly 7.22 % and 12.38 % at the flow rate of 0.17 kg/s. Furthermore, the overall efficiency in the solid and perforated baffled PV/Ts improves by 17.29 % and 39.78 % compared to the unbaffled one at the flow rate of 0.17 kg/s. Hence, using perforated baffles is a strong method to boost the efficiency of PV/Ts.