An Experimental Study on Cooling the Photovoltaic Modules by Fins to Improve Power Generation: Economic Assessment

Abstract

Photovoltaic (PV) power plant is one of the most important renewable power generation methods, which is rapidly developing. One of the weak points of PV power plants is the negative effects of increasing the cells temperature on their power generation. In this study, a simple and low cost method is proposed to reduce the temperature of these panels. The use of fins has been proven in many industrial applications and here it is used as coolant of PV panel. This experiment was performed in maximum operating temperature of photovoltaic modules which is known as 85°C. By using numbers of aluminum fins on the back surface of photovoltaic panels under two different irradiation, the temperature reduction up to 7.4 °C was observed, and this reduction leads to 2.72 % increasing in efficiency. Finally, an economical assessmen t of the offered cases based on output power of PV panels carried out, which shows a suitable economic justifiability.

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

“…This was attributed to the higher value of h for the case of internal cooling than that for the natural and external cooling methods. The reduction in temperature of the Si solar cell achieved in this study has been compared with the results obtained by other cooling methods reported in the 27 Farhanet al, 28 Firoozzadeh et al, 29 Hasan et al, 30 Krstic et al, 31 AI-Amri et al, 32 Ahmad et al, 33 Raina et al, 34 Hernandez-Perez et al, 35 literature and is summarized in Table 2. Apparently, the internal active cooling method proposed in this study offered a relatively higher temperature reduction in comparison to passive cooling and analogous external active cooling methods.…”

A State of Art Review on Advance Cooling Strategies of Solar Photovoltaic System

“…The solar cell is normally surrounded by high-thermal-conductivity radiators. The radiator expands the heat transfer field from the solar cell to the surrounding atmosphere [19,20]. Because of its versatility and low cost, it has remarkable potential to cool PV panels.…”

A Novel Proposed Improvement on Performance of a Photovoltaic/Water Pumping System: Energy and Environmental Analysis

“…Moreover, the exact location of thermal sensor behind the PV panel is shown in Figure 2. More information about the setup is available in [34,35].…”