Thermal Analysis of PV Module and the Effect on its Efficiency

Abstract

The performance of a photovoltaic (PV) module depends on some factors, such as the variation of solar radiation, convection heat transfer coefficient and temperature. The aim of this work is to consider the performance of the silicon-based PV module through the thermal analysis by using ANSYS software. The PV module consists of glass, ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA), solar cell, EVA, and polyvinyl fluoride (PVF) from top to bottom. The simulation of the heat loss using ANSYS is obtained by the thermal conductivity of the materials, the different convection, and different solar irradiation. The environmental condition of PV module, with solar radiation 1000 W/m2, convective heat coefficient 8 W/m2 and ambient temperature 25°C, makes the module temperature to 47.15°C and the estimated efficiency to 13.50%. As the increase of the ambient temperature to 50°C, the estimated efficiency goes down to 11.82%. Since the temperature increases, the efficiency of the PV module will decrease. Meanwhile, the decrease of solar irradiation at 500 W/m2 makes the improvement of estimated PV efficiency at 14.25%, which means the thermal management of the PV module is very important for the PV applications.