Parked electric car's cabin heat management using photovoltaic powered ventilation system

Abstract

This paper explores the use of electric car roof mounted photovoltaic (PV) powered ventilation for cabin heat management/ventilation. A fully-functional Renault Zoe electric car has been used for performance evaluation of parked electric car ventilation directly powered by PV. This work has been part of a research project of testing electric cars in the urban environment and it has been conducted at the Edinburgh Napier University’s Transport Research Institute. In this work, parked electric car ventilation has been reported, when roof-mounted PV modules were used to operate DC powered fans for ventilation. It has been found that the DC motor-fan selection for removing the hot air from cabin space is of important (i.e. operating characteristics of motor-fan have been very close to the maximum power points locus of the PV modules at different solar insolation). The electric car cabin temperature models with reference to solar radiation have been presented and it will be useful for knowing the parked car cabin temperature variations and designing the car roof mounted PV powered ventilation system. In this paper, performance evaluation of parked electric car’s cabin heat management is presented and analysed. Results from this work will be helpful for designing electric car ventilation system (operating at parking time), when powered by vehicle roof integrated PV modules.