Optimization and energy analysis of a novel geothermal heat exchanger for photovoltaic panel cooling

Abstract

Electrical energy and conversion efficiency of the photovoltaic (PV) solar panels are measured under standard test conditions in some microseconds at the room temperature (25 °C). It also is seen that the actual working conditions, on the other hand, with higher ambient temperature and continuous generated heat in the PV cells can lead to reduction in reduce their electricity generation and long-term sustainability. In the current work, the coolant (water + ethylene glycol) circulates between two heat exchangers; the minichannel heat exchanger is bounded to the PV cells and geothermal heat exchanger is buried underground, and it is set to remove the heat from PV cells to the ground. Six control factors of the geothermal cooling system are considered for the purpose of optimization using Taguchi design and main effect analysis. These parameters are pipe length, soil thermal conductivity, coolant flow rate, adjacent coil distance, pipe inner diameter and pipe thickness. The experimental results show that the average net electricity generation of the cooled PV panel is improved 9.8% compared to the PV panel without cooling system. However, with the same geothermal heat exchanger it drops to 6.2% as the cooled panel number is doubled. The simulation results reveal that the optimum configuration of the geothermal cooling system is capable of enhancing the net electricity generation of the twin cooled panels up to 11.6%. The LCOE of the optimized geothermal cooling system was calculated 0.089 €/kWh versus the reference panel of 0.102 €/kWh for the case study of 30 kW PV solar plant.