An active cooling system for photovoltaic module

Teo, H. G. and Lee, P. S. and Hawlader, Mohammad Nurul Alam (2012) An active cooling system for photovoltaic module. Applied Energy, 90 (1). pp. 309-315. ISSN 0306-2619

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Abstract

The electrical efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) cell is adversely affected by the significant increase of cell operating temperature during absorption of solar radiation. A hybrid photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) solar system was designed, fabricated and experimentally investigated in this work. To actively cool the PV cells, a parallel array of ducts with inlet/outlet manifold designed for uniform airflow distribution was attached to the back of the PV panel. Experiments were performed with and without active cooling. A linear trend between the efficiency and temperature was found. Without active cooling, the temperature of the module was high and solar cells can only achieve an efficiency of 8–9%. However, when the module was operated under active cooling condition, the temperature dropped significantly leading to an increase in efficiency of solar cells to between 12% and 14%. A heat transfer simulation model was developed to compare to the actual temperature profile of PV module and good agreement between the simulation and experimental results is obtained.

Item Type:	Article (Journal)
Additional Information:	6548/22802
Subjects:	T Technology > TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery > TJ163.26 Energy conservation
Kulliyyahs/Centres/Divisions/Institutes (Can select more than one option. Press CONTROL button):	Kulliyyah of Engineering
Depositing User:	Prof Mohammad Nurul Alam / M N A Hawlader
Date Deposited:	11 Jun 2012 12:06
Last Modified:	22 Jul 2014 10:37
URI:	http://irep.iium.edu.my/id/eprint/22802

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