Air-Breathing Silicon PV Module Enabled by Internal Microfluidic Channels for Direct Cooling Application: A Validated Design Concept

Abstract

Photovoltaic power plants never realize their true production capacity during operation primarily because of the unavoidable heating of the solar modules under solar irradiation. Although the heating of silicon solar modules has received serious attention in the past decade, an effective and commercially viable solution is still unavailable. This study presents a detailed evaluation of the performance of a novel air-breathing internal microfluidic design (proposed in our patent application 202211050095 to the Government of India) that can be embedded in the photovoltaic modules to enable direct cooling of silicon solar cells. It was reported that a conventional silicon photovoltaic module had incurred a heat-induced fractional loss in the light harvesting efficiency of 21.4%, which was lowered to 11.3% when conventional external air cooling was employed. However, the proposed internal air cooling reduced the fractional loss in efficiency further down to 7.3% at the steady state.